Advancing Healthcare Awards 2018 Blog three: Local authority health commissioners

Six reasons why local authority health commissioners love Chroma

One of the areas where Neurologic Music Therapy is making the biggest strides is in local authorities health care – and Chroma is better positioned than any other provider.

Daniel Thomas, managing director, explained: “It’s not just that we have the pedigree of being the UK’s only national arts therapy provider, although that is an important sign of our credibility, but that we have developed standards, procedures and ways of working that deliver the best outcomes for patients and fit in with how local authorities operate.”

He said there were six main reasons why local authority health commissioners loved working with Chroma:

• Chroma has robust and secure case management systems and policies in place to protect those with whom they work and their therapists.
• It provides resilient and robust therapists who travel to the client and are given the right kind of support to produce the excellent quality work.
• Chroma works with the families and networks around the child as part of its approach. This is a core part of its service and not an extra.
• There are robust systems in place for report writing, ensuring local authorities have the evidence they need to support ongoing work.
• Chroma’s therapists are experts in working with attachment and early trauma.
• The senior leadership team are clinicians with many years of practical experience at the intensive end of the sector.

One of Chroma’s core activities with local authorities is its work in adoption and it is an official provider for the Adoption Support Fund.

Marie Higgins, adoption support services manager, family operations at Essex County Council, praised the role the company had played in her local authority: “Working with Chroma over the past year has been a positive experience. Our families have benefited from the innovative work that their therapists have provided and feedback from social workers has highlighted the positive outcomes for adopted children and their parents.”

As part of efforts to bring its work to the attention of more local authority health commissioners, Chroma is sponsoring the Advancing Healthcare Awards for the new Realising Potential Through Creativity category.

Daniel said: “As a former winner of an Advancing Healthcare Award, we know how much it can mean to a business and we are very pleased to be involved in the creation of this new category, which highlights the concrete contribution that the arts make to healthcare in local authorities and elsewhere.”