Assessment in the Creative Arts Therapies: Designing and Adapting Assessment Tools for Adults with Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

Assessment in the creative arts therapies: Designing and adapting assessment tools for adults with developmental disabilities Stephen Snow and Miranda D'Amico (Editors) Charles C. Thomas (2009) ISBN 978-0-398-07887-4This book is a unique contribution the challenging area of creating assessment tools that are arts-centered using various creative arts therapies. It is a timely response the ever-growing demand in the clinical arenas where funding is more and more restricted, for demonstrated effectiveness of our work, i.e., evidence-based practice using controlled, replicable studies. The authors acknowledge the difficulty this presents for many arts therapists, who see themselves first as artists, who are neither interested in nor trained as researchers, who see research as limited in its ability represent the whole person, and can therefore at best be limiting and at worst can be extremely misleading. I feel that the authors have done an excellent job of tangling with these issues as they share their processes, working in real-life clinical situations, and have come up with some excellent solutions that are both replicable and address the whole person.The book is composed of seven chapters, five of which address assessment using five different arts therapies, with the same population of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities who were all participants in a 3-year program at the Centre for the Arts in Human Development at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. After a 4-year pilot project exploring assessment in the arts therapies, the Centre was given a threeyear Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant formalize their findings and this book is the result of their 7 years of work!The first chapter by the editors addresses the challenges of assessment, particularly using the Creative Arts Therapies, and it introduces us the Centre for the Arts at Concordia University. In the second chapter Lister and Rosales describe how they adapted the Kinetic-House-Tree-Person drawing for use with the Centre's population. Chapter 3, written by music therapist Shelley Snow, describes the process of developing an assessment tool for their clients. I will return this chapter in more detail. In Chapter 4, Stephen Snow, Maeng-Cleveland, and Steinfort describe the journey towards adapting the Diagnostic Role-Playing Test and they include two case vignettes that exemplify the results of this process. Chapter 5 focuses on the analysis of movement, written by dance therapists Sack and Bolster. Art therapist and sandtray specialist Tanguay describes how the sand tray can be used and adapted for assessment with the Centre's population. Again, case vignettes are presented along with an analysis of the results. And finally, in Chapter 7, D'Amico, Miodrag, and Dinolfo summarize the various results of these arts therapies and correlate them with Quality of Life measures that they used over the same three-year period. Their results strongly reinforced the value of combining the use of the various creative arts therapies assess, support and develop each client's personal growth.Since we are music therapists, I will describe in more detail Shelley Snow's chapter on developing a music therapy assessment tool. Snow begins with a brief discussion about the issues of evidence-based research and the criticisms of qualitative researchers for failing to encompass the richness of the Music Therapy process in all its dimensions. Snow fully agrees with their views, but feels that evidence-based research can describe and measure some things, and for that reason, it can be valuable, while acknowledging that it cannot describe and measure all things about a person. …

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