Music therapist at Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust

The job at Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust

Music therapists use improvisation, songwriting, listening and shared music-making as the main means of communication with people who find talking difficult or impossible. No musical skill is needed from the person attending. Sessions are planned around agreed clinical aims and may be one to one or in groups. Alongside direct work, music therapists assess referrals, choose and maintain instruments, record and review sessions, keep clinical notes, take supervision, and coach families, teachers and ward staff in using music between sessions. People of all ages with emotional or mental health difficulties, learning or physical disabilities, developmental conditions including autism, neurological conditions, dementia, and life-limiting or palliative illness.

At a mental health trust such as Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust, that work means a mental health caseload across inpatient units, community mental health teams, crisis services and, in most organisations, child and adolescent and secure services. Rotations here tend to move between inpatient and community teams rather than between body systems, and supervision arrangements matter more than in almost any other setting. Across the profession as a whole, music therapists work in settings including NHS acute trust, NHS mental health trust, hospices and palliative care, special schools and early years settings and day centres — an organisation of this type will run some of those services and not others, which is why two posts with the same job title in the same city can be very different jobs.

Pay is not an employer decision. Agenda for Change is negotiated nationally and set separately in each of the four nations, so Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust pays band 6 exactly what every other NHS employer in England pays it: £39,959 at the bottom of the band on the 2026/27 scale. For context, median full-time pay across all occupations in the South West was £37,195 in 2025. What genuinely differs between two employers is the caseload, how rotations are structured, how much protected time you get for supervision and continuing professional development, how much band 6 progression is built into the establishment, and how far you travel between sites. Those are the questions worth asking at interview.

This page states no figure specific to Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust because none is published in the open data. When the workforce and staff survey feeds include this organisation, the establishment size, the response rate and the theme scores will appear above.