Break through

charity which uses the power of music for healing. STEPHEN LEWIS reports.

GIVE Declan Suddaby a drum or xylophone to play with and his face lights up with a beaming, gap-toothed grin. The seven-year-old is doing well at Terrington Hall School, making friends and getting on in class. Unless you were an expert, says proud dad Neil, you would never know there had ever been anything wrong with him.

Which is a little miracle in itself. Because just a few years ago, the future seemed bleak. Declan had been diagnosed as severely autistic: and he seemed doomed to a future of isolation, loneliness and frustration.

He developed normally until 18 months, says Neil, who runs Malton's Crown Hotel with his wife Karen. He was already beginning to speak a few words, just like any other child his age. Then it all came to a stop.

"He went back into himself, his eye co-ordination became poor, and he started lining up video boxes - a kind of obsessional behaviour," Neil says. "Then it spiralled down."

Declan's frantic mum Karen began reading up on the condition - and that was when she and Neil learned about music therapy.

They contacted therapist Angela Harrison, of the North Yorkshire Music Therapy Centre - and Declan has been receiving therapy ever since.

"One of the first things we did was contact Angela," says Neil. "She came along and Declan hit it off with her straight away."

By letting Declan use a range of musical instruments - everything from drums, xylophones and bongos to the piano and even his own voice - Angela enabled him to learn to communicate again.

"The music taught him to listen, and he was able to use it as a channel for his aggression and frustration," Neil says. "It was a way of releasing all those pent-up emotions. It helped him to break down barriers, and enabled him to concentrate which, at the time, he wasn't doing."

Neil and Karen wouldn't claim it was music therapy alone which helped Declan develop into the boy he is today - but they are quite convinced it was an enormous help.

Music therapy is an established technique which helps children and adults with mental health problems or learning difficulties learn to communicate and express themselves through music.

They don't learn to become musicians. Instead, often using percussion instruments like drums or xylophones, they learn to express their feelings through rhythm and music - and, by listening and responding to the sounds made by others, to communicate.

"Many of the people we work with, whatever their difficulties, feel a sense of isolation," explains Angela, a former professional musician with the Halle Orchestra. "Through music therapy they can have a sense of somebody else communicating with them in a very real way.

"It's also a very safe way of expressing themselves. You can push yourself to the extreme of emotions, and it will be through an instrument, you're not putting it into words.

"It can be a great release, a physical release as well as an emotional one, particularly the drums."

The Suddabys believe music therapy should be more widely available to everybody in the county - not just for people with autism, but also for people suffering from a range of other conditions from dementia and cerebral palsy to emotional and behavioural disturbance.

The problem is that in North Yorkshire there is almost no public funding to support it. North Yorkshire Music Therapy Centre is a charity, and it struggles to raise the cash to support the four music therapists it now has - a pitifully small number for a county this size - let alone expand.

Now, though, things could be about to change.

From being a struggling local charity doing wonderful work in relative obscurity, the music therapy centre is set to become much more high profile.

North Yorkshire soprano Lynne Dawson, who most famously sang at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, has just become the charity's new president.

Lynne, who has two children of her own, has always been keen to work with charities that help children.

"When you have children of your own who are healthy, you feel so enormously grateful," she says.

Her own passion for music - it is "good for the soul," she says - meant it didn't take her long to accept once she was asked by the music therapy centre to be its president.

She is pledging to be very much hands-on, setting out to raise the charity's profile and boost its coffers at the same time.

A fund-raising concert at York Minster is planned - and already Lynne has attended a music therapy session with Angela at The Retreat, the private psychiatric hospital in York, where she joined in with patients.

"They didn't know who I was, but they accepted me," she says. "My feeling was that music therapy offers them the potential to discover other ways of communicating, listening and trusting each-other. It was extraordinary."

With Lynne's help, the charity, which has to charge for its services because funding is so tight, hopes to be able to expand. Over the next three years, it aims to recruit one extra therapist a year - and to offer therapy on a 'sliding scale' of charges that will make it accessible to people on low incomes.

The charity, Angela admits, is "thrilled" to have Lynne on board.

"The demand is huge," she says. "There are so many people who could benefit, and we just can't work with enough of them because we haven't got the money.

"If we can just get more money coming in, that would enable us to help a lot more people."

People like Declan.

Lynne met the little boy at his home in Malton a couple of hours before she was formally inaugurated as the charity's new president last Thursday.

"They got on wonderfully well," says Declan's dad Neil. "But he gets on well with everybody!"

Which says it all.

- To find out more about the North Yorkshire Music Therapy Centre, or to make a donation, telephone 01653 698129.