When we sing it sounds like there are more of us: Findings from the first cohort of the Carer’s Music Fund

Since September 2019, Spirit of 2012’s Carers’ Music Fund projects have been engaging female carers across the UK in music activities with the aim of reducing loneliness, improving their mental health and
wellbeing, and challenging gendered perceptions of caring.

The What Works Centre for Wellbeing is leading the Fund’s Learning partnership, working alongside programme evaluators, Apteligen, the Behavioural Insights Team and Carers UK, to ensure that the awarded projects ground their work in the latest research on wellbeing and loneliness.

This briefing is the first in a series of insight reports and podcasts that explore the wellbeing benefits of participatory music-making activities. It’s based on data collected between October 2019 and March 2020, prior to the Coronavirus pandemic. Thinking ahead, the Fund’s evaluation activities will help inform an increasingly complex post-COVID landscape which poses new challenges for the delivery and evaluation of wellbeing interventions.

The Carers’ Music Fund has been made possible by funding Spirit of 2012 received from the Tampon Tax Fund, awarded through the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The Tampon Tax Fund was set up to allocate the money generated from the VAT on sanitary products to projects that improve the lives of disadvantaged women and girls. Spirit was awarded £1.5 million from the fund in March 2019.

Between October 2019 and March 2020, 287 women who are carers took part in the music-making activities delivered by eight Carer’s Music Fund projects. Through the  grant-holders engaged women and girls of a wide range of age groups and carer profiles:

• The majority were of working age (16-64 yrs) (68%) and 13% were in the 10-15 age group as three of the projects specifically targeted young carers.
• 79% were of White-English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish/British ethnicity, followed by Chinese (14%) – one of the project’s specific target groups.
• Two thirds of working-age participants (66%) were not in paid employment at the beginning of the projects.
• Participants had been in their caring roles for a range of time lengths, with half the sample having been carers for over eight years, 23% between three and eight years, and only 6% for less than one year.
• Almost half of the Fund’s project participants were full-time carers providing over 90 hours per week (42%), while a quarter (25%) care for less than 20 hours. This is broadly consistent with the national picture, which shows that 46% of carers across the UK care for more than 90 hours per week.
• Almost a third of participants cared for a child (28%), followed by a parent (17%), while a minority care for more than one person (15%).
• There was an equal split between participants who had received formal support as a carer before and those who hadn’t.

Key findings: personal wellbeing, loneliness and social connectedness at the start of the project

• Carers’ Music Fund projects are engaging individuals with low wellbeing. At the start of the projects, the wellbeing scores of participating carers were lower than national average scores across personal wellbeing measures (life satisfaction, feeling worthwhile, happiness, and anxiety).
• When asked how often they feel lonely 13% said ‘often or always’ which is more than double the figure reported in a national survey sample (6%).
• Data on relationships and social networks of participants at the start of the projects show:
• 25% of women and girls either disagreed or didn’t fully agree that they had people to socialise with, compared with 5.3% nationally.
• While 73% agreed that there were people there for them when they needed help, only 26% “strongly” agreed, in contrast to the national average (67%).

Changes in personal wellbeing

By the end of cohort one, the average wellbeing of female carers had improved across the personal wellbeing measures, particularly for life satisfaction, feeling worthwhile and happiness.

• Overall, improvements were larger among adult carers and carers who were not working, while for young carers, life satisfaction improved more than any other personal wellbeing measure.
• Improvements were smaller for full-time carers, likely reflecting the considerable caregiver burden faced by this group.

Feelings about the future and satisfaction with the programme

• Nearly half of participants (42%) said they felt “a lot better” about their life and future after attending Carers Music Fund project sessions.
• “Doing something as part of a group” and “time away from caring responsibilities” were the most commonly cited reasons (80% and 67%, respectively), suggesting that the Fund’s projects may be strengthening the social networks of participants as well as reducing levels of stress associated with the caring role.
• By the end of the project, just over half the sample (51%) said they were “very” or “extremely” likely to continue to be involved in some sort of music-making, reflecting high levels of satisfaction with the

The initial findings personal wellbeing outcomes achieved for grant-holders look promising. To gain a more accurate picture of wellbeing effects and of the contribution of Carers’ Music Fund projects, the Learning partnership will continue to support grant-holders with data collection as well as qualitative insights on how and why wellbeing improves for specific groups of carers.

See our blog for the next insight report which explores the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on projects, with learning on the challenges and adaptations that have begun to shape the Fund’s next phase of delivery.

Evidence from the Centre points to a range of health and wellbeing benefits of structured music and singing interventions, in particular, reducing loneliness, anxiety and depression in older adults. For vulnerable groups, singing in a collective setting appears to facilitate relationship-building and increase engagement with the community. Among healthy adults, being a member of a music ensemble can also enhance subjective wellbeing and may provide a vehicle for identity construction.

We know relatively little about what works to improve the wellbeing of carers, despite this group’s consistently lower wellbeing compared to the national average.  In 2019, 81% of carers declared they felt lonely or socially isolated as a result of their caring role and felt nearly twice as anxious as the general population. In other evidence, social loneliness, defined as the quality and quantity of social relationships, has emerged as a key theme in studies of informal caring. Some of its likely causes are the restrictions imposed by the caregiving role itself, including reduced personal space as well as relationship deprivations and a sense of powerlessness.

Carers Music Fund grant-holders have designed their projects using existing evidence on the mechanisms that help reduce loneliness: the creation of meaningful relationships, tailored support and reducing stigma. By targeting carers across age groups, the projects can improve our understanding of the experiences of loneliness in young people and people of working age and shed light on how participatory music-making activities can benefit their wellbeing.

Spirit of 2012 is committed to using standardised wellbeing measures to demonstrate the value of their funding. Through the programme’s Learning partnership, they’ve ensured the Fund will generate useful and usable data on personal wellbeing and loneliness outcomes.

Carers’ Music Fund projects are encouraged to work iteratively by delivering “terms” of weekly music-making sessions to four different cohorts of women and girls. The “test-and-learn” approach and cohort structure embraced by the projects is about taking stock and refining engagement and delivery strategies throughout the course of the programme. The potential for learning is huge given the broad range of carer groups taking part, including young and new mothers, recently arrived refugee groups and women living in rural communities.

In the Fund’s programme evaluation framework, the personal wellbeing of female carers is thought to improve once a series of core wellbeing outcomes are achieved. The Theory of Change below developed for seven grant-holders^[1] shows the process of change experienced across participants.

Starting from the left-hand-side, it describes the personal circumstances and factors that help explain the low wellbeing and social isolation experienced by carers as they progress through a 12-week programme of activities.

Project mechanisms become enablers of positive change and lead to improved levels of wellbeing, reduced loneliness and an improvement in social connections and relationships in the longer-term.

Figure 1: Aggregate Theory of Change for seven Carers’ Music Fund projects
How does participating in music-making activities impact the wellbeing of female carers?

[1] The aggregate Theory of Change was developed by the What Works Centre for Wellbeing using the project-level Theories of Change developed by the Behavioural Insights Team for seven grant-holders and the programme-level Theory of Change developed by Apteligen.

To test the effectiveness of music interventions Apteligen has been supporting grant-holders to track the progress of their participants, from when they first engage, to when they complete the programme. By using standardised survey questions, Carers’ Music Fund projects can begin to understand how the subjective wellbeing, social isolation and emotional experiences of loneliness affect female carers and how they compare to others in the UK.

Outcomes data was collected from 287 female carers across 8 projects.  Partly due to the new challenges to data collection posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, complete data was only obtained for 51 participants, making it hard to paint an accurate picture of the wellbeing outcomes generated by the Fund at this stage.

Thanks to the Carers’ Music Fund’s test-and-learn approach, we know that grant-holders have faced significant challenges in the recruitment and retention of their participants.  Key findings in early evaluation data suggest carers are a particularly difficult group to engage in participatory activities. In general, vulnerable groups may find the completion of questionnaires excessively burdensome and organisations themselves sometimes struggle when discussing topics such as loneliness with their participants.

Despite these challenges, the learning loop built between evaluations at the Carers’ Music Fund project and programme levels has helped grant-holders generate invaluable learning on the deep-rooted emotional and practical barriers faced by female carers and better target their efforts. Adapting messaging to highlight the women-only focus of their activities and being sensitive to cultural norms are key mechanisms of change that Carers’ Music Fund projects have begun to incorporate into their activities with subsequent cohorts.

Of the 10 projects^[2], seven are in England, with one each in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.  In Ipswich, Bury St. Edmunds and Lowestoft, Noise Solution is delivering a digital music making project to young carers, focusing on both one-to-one music mentoring and collective music-making.

In Birmingham, Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), through partnerships with Midland Mencap and Quench Arts, is engaging a range of their existing groups who focus on areas such as mental health, disability and specific cultural communities, while also trying to reach those who may not consider themselves to be carers.

Over in Hull and East Riding, My Pockets work with mixed groups of carers around the theme of ‘Monster Extraction’ – supporting them to identify, and banish, their personal ‘monsters’ through music, while new mothers in rural locations outside Inverness, including recently arrived Syrian refugees, will work with Feis Rois to write lullabies for their babies which will be professionally recorded.

[2] The 10 organisations funded by the Carers’ Music Fund are: Blackpool Carers Centre, Jack Drum Arts, Midlands Arts Centre (MAC), My Pockets, Noise Solution, Northamptonshire Carers, UK Youth, Oh Yeah Music, Feis Rois and Barnardo’s.  Projects will run until December 2020, followed by a three-month evaluation period up to the end of March 2021 agreed as an adaptation to COVID-19 pandemic.

The Carers’ Music Fund: Grant portfolio