Music and singing are accessible, cost-effective activities that have the potential to make a powerful impact on care home residents, staff, families and the wider community. Recent research suggests that membership in community groups is associated with enhanced wellbeing in older age with music classes associated with life satisfaction and lower negative affect (Fancourt and Steptoe, 2018). The development of programmes that encourage engagement for ‘older adults who may not normally access these community resources’ has also been proposed (ibid). The benefits of singing for older adults are becoming increasingly recognised. For example, the working paper produced by Clift, Gilbert and Vella-Burrows (2016) as part of the ‘A choir in every care home’ initiative provides a foundation from which to build and support wider implementation of group singing activities across care settings in the UK and highlights the benefits for quality of interaction and experience between the person and their carer.
The research presented in this paper builds on the findings of previous research to employ a rights-based, co-design approach to explore the role of music within the care home context towards developing person-centred, music-based interventions. The interventions aimed to support the National Care Standards to enable residents to develop their personal identify, facilitate relationships, friendships and wider social support and support the right to participate in this type of activity which engages social, cultural and leisure aspects.
Employing a co-design approach supported participation of residents, staff and volunteers to share their lived experiences of living, working and visiting care homes and enabled the co-creation of a rights-based toolkit to support the meaningful use of music in care homes. Employing an asset-based approach, the design researchers used their skills to empower participant’s individual capabilities (Cipolla and Bartholo, 2014), supporting them to engage
and contribute to the creative process.