We are delighted to announce that we have a soon to be published author amongst our staff! Anna Ludwig, our music therapist, has edited a book called “Music Therapy in Children and Young People’s Palliative Care” which is published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers (JKP) on August the 21st this year. As well as pulling the whole book together and editing it, Anna also wrote the introduction and one of the 10 chapters.

Anna works 2 days a week at Kilbryde Hospice providing individual and group music therapy sessions (for adult patients and family members/carers) and running the Kilbryde Community Choir (open to all, every Wednesday at the hospice at 1:30pm). Since joining the hospice in August 2013, Anna has gone from working on a freelance basis for Kilbryde (one afternoon a fortnight) to being employed 2 days a week at the hospice.

When Anna isn’t working at Kilbryde Hospice, she works for two children’s charities, The Team Jak Foundation and the John O’Byrne Foundation, both of whom fund music therapy at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow. Anna currently provides music therapy session for these charities once a fortnight in the Oncology and Neurology wards, plus one afternoon a week at the Team Jak base in Livingston. Anna’s chapter in the book is all about her work with the Team Jak Foundation, a charity based in Livingston, who provide emotional and social support to children with cancer and their families.

Prior to working at Kilbryde, Anna lived and worked south of the border, spending 6 years working for Keech Hospice Care in Luton. Keech is an adult and children’s hospice and Anna worked across both. As part of this work, she encountered many children with life limiting conditions which often meant that they had profound and multiple disabilities. Anna decided she would like to pull together a resource book for working with these type of children. This is where the seed of her book was sown and it soon developed into a much larger project which in turn, developed into the book. In all, from the initial idea to the actual publication, this has been a 7 year journey for Anna!

The book brings together music therapists who have worked in the challenging and rewarding world of children’s palliative care. Examining appropriate techniques for this setting, such as working with the breath or using assertive recording and electronic downloading, it highlights the benefits of music therapy for children and young people with life-limiting conditions.

The book is available to pre-order on Amazon and is launched officially on the 21st of August 2019.

You can pre-order your copy here!