CAN group singing help people suffering with Parkinson’s disease to maintain the strength and clarity of their voices?

A group of staff and patients in Herefordshire has been experimenting with the musical activity and won a national prize for its endeavours.

They are all part of Herefordshire Primary Care Trust’s Parkinson’s disease team and the singing project was the idea of one of the patients, Mike Canavan.

Caroline Evans, a Parkinson’s nurse specialist, said it was known that music therapy helped mood and movement but only one small study in Italy had looked at singing as a form of therapy.

“Somewhere between 50-80% of people with Parkinson’s experience some form of speech and communications problems and we wanted to investigate whether group singing could help maintain strength and clarity of voice,” she said.

A two-year project was set up involving Caroline, Ruth Proctor, principal speech and language therapist, and Roger Langford, a singing teacher. The patients meet every two weeks for singing sessions and their voices were measured every six months.

The group is now approaching larger centres to conduct further research, will continue with their work in Herefordshire and look at including other long-term neurological conditions in the research.

The project was one of hundreds from the West Midlands to be selected for the finals of the Regional Health and Social Care Awards in Birmingham last week.

It was awarded a special prize – the Judges Award – and described as “an innovative and exciting project that demonstrated the use of professional skills in a very personal way”.

Chris Bull, chief executive of the PCT , said: “These awards are among the most prestigious in the public service and are regarded as a major event in the NHS calendar. The standard of applications was extremely high and the PCT is especially proud of the work undertaken by Caroline and her colleagues.”