The time is here again for the annual Social Media Advocacy Month. I remember when this project first took off in 2011, and I think it’s safe to say it has been a success. My first Advocacy Month post, now 5 years ago, was about teaching others, sometimes subtly, to be music therapists. You can find it here: Teaching Advocacy
It’s amazing to think of all that has been accomplished since then. Several states have achieved state recognition, and many others have task forces in various stages of securing protective legislation.
This year, the focus is re: vision. It is an acronym for Value and Imagine Success: Invest in Opportunities Now.
I actually love the way this breaks down, and it resonates with me on a deep level. I remember being at the 2010 conference, and a slide popped up during the State of the Association meeting with the title, “2020 Vision”. They weren’t talking about eyesight, but about the direction of the profession.
I thought to myself, “Why is anyone thinking about the year 2020? That’s so far away! Let’s talk about 2011!”
But now that we are halfway there, I can see how important it was to have that vision, even if we’ve had a few changes in course and a couple reroutes.
One of these reroutes is the development of the new Scope of Music Therapy Practice. It’s creation stemmed from challenges faced in the state recognition process.
Instead of meeting these challenges with stubbornness and indignation, our leadership viewed them as an opportunities to clarify the range of responsibilities of a music therapist. They invested in the opportunity and created a new document, which is beautiful. There is no doubt that it will support the state recognition efforts, as well as any advocacy efforts made by you and me. So please take a look and use this document as applicable.
They issued this statement along with it:
As the profession of music therapy has been moving forward with recognition at the state level it has been identified that a document was needed to reflect a similar format to other health care professional organizations Scopes of Practice. CBMT and AMTA worked together to create a Scope of Music Therapy Practice (2015) for the profession based on published documents from both organizations. This new document entitled Scope of Music Therapy Practice (2015) is available as an educational tool and legislative support document that broadly defines the range of responsibilities of a fully qualified music therapy professional with requisite education, clinical training, and board certification.
Click here to read the Scope of Music Therapy Practice (2015).
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