Professional Advocacy
The goals and tasks of the Professional Advocacy Committee
are related to the Mission and goals of AMTA especially in the area of
Advocacy:
II. Advocacy [AMTA Strategic Plan, 2000]
Advocacy: Promoting music therapy means advancing public awareness of music therapy as a viable health care profession and as an efficacious clinical intervention. In addition, AMTA must continue to advocate for the provision of music therapy services in medical, educational, community-based and other settings.
GOALS:
- To advocate for the professional representation of the field
of music therapy.
- To assist membership in responding to misrepresentation of music therapy in the media and in public.
In addition, the AMTA Professional Advocacy Committee has worked to format the AMTA Standards of Clinical Practice into an evaluation tool as a checklist for clinicians. The intent is for clinicians to self-rate their practice. It can be used for a myriad of uses: determining program strengths/weaknesses, determining continuing education needs for personal clinical needs, determining areas of needed supervision, etc.
This quarter AMTA asked the Professional Advocacy committee to review documentation based on the new adopted policy on acronym usage to be implemented no later than January 1, 2012. Per request of the AMTA president, the Professional Advocacy committee was directed to study the Self-Assessment and determine what, if any, revisions would need to be proposed in this document to align with the new acronym policy. To assist, the ETAB's Advisory on Acronyms and a FAQ sheet with key answers on this topic we provided. In addition, 2 possible advocacy issues were brought to my attention. The first involved a local publication using the term “music therapy” to refer to the work of a harp therapist. It so happened that I know that harp therapist interviewed, and am confident that they know the difference between “harp therapy” and “music therapy.” I contacted my committee and we all agreed that this was a case of wrong wording on the part of the writer, and that no further action was needed based on the nature of the publication. The second possible issue was just brought to my attention last week and involves a possible non MT-BC providing what has been advertised as “Group Music Therapy Sessions.” I am currently working with CBMT to draft a letter to deal with this situation. I will provide more details as this process develops.
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