Watching the sheer joy and excitement on the young boy’s face as he reached out a shaky but insistent hand to strum the guitar being offered to him, then shrieked with delight at the sound he had created, I swallowed hard to dissolve the lump in my throat.

It was the first time I had been to a music-making session organised by Soundabout, the Oxfordshire-based charity that I have recently been appointed to lead, and I was hooked and inspired by what our music practitioners were able to achieve.

There are over 100,000 people in the UK with profound and multiple learning difficulties – ‘complex needs’ – who have severe difficulty interacting with the world around them.

Many need full time support to eat, or to speak, or even to move, yet every one of these people can interact socially with the aid of music, with sound and rhythm – as my new friend Daniel had already shown me.

The sad truth is, however, that few have access to the sort of music provision designed to meet their specific needs. That is where is where Soundabout steps in.

Based at the Cornerstone Arts Centre in Didcot but operating nationally, the charity has been in existence for over 20 years improving the lives of people with severe disabilities.

The needs, however, greatly exceed our capacity to deliver help: sadly, most people have not yet heard about the charity’s incredible work. Our challenge is to change this.

Fortunately, I have had some experience of how effective music can be in raising awareness, most notably standing on stage with the Missing People Choir as we reached the finals of Britain’s Got Talent 2017.

Four years earlier, music producer James Hawkins came to me with the idea of our forming a choir from the families of the missing, aiming to use music to enable them them build a community of support around each other, and offer a less intrusive form of therapy than the norm.

Singing together gave the group a sense of purpose and was a powerful way to build solidarity among the families and to help them express their emotions.

As one choir member put it, when singing together “it feels like we are reaching out to our missing loved ones”.

It proved to be one of the most effective services that the charity was able to offer families.

The BGT initiative alone took their message of hope to 20 million people, and as a direct result, two missing people were found within days.

It showed me, if I didn’t know already, how incredibly powerful music can be to move people.

One year later, and I am now lucky enough to be leading Soundabout, which also – though in a very different context – uses music to help give a voice to those for whom communication is a significant challenge.

Our specially-trained team of music practitioners operate to empower those working with or caring for people with learning disabilities to use music to help such people to communicate more effectively with families, friends, or carers.

Just because someone has a disability doesn’t mean that they are disabled musically. To benefit from Soundabout’s highly successful methods – which we have been using since the charity’s inception over 20 years ago – does not require any specialist musical expertise.

In 2017, we trained more than 500 teachers, teaching assistants and practitioners, and directly helped 1,343 people with learning disabilities, alongside their families and carers via our community music making sessions in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and beyond.

These statistics are impressive, but our resources are severely limited and there is so much more to do. Our ambitious aim is that everyone with a severe or profound learning disability should be able to access the life-changing services provided by Soundabout.

We need support to get there, and everyone reading this could make a difference.

If you also believe in the power of music to do good, please do follow us on Facebook and get in touch if you are interested in volunteering, fundraising, making a donation or partnering with us.

We would love to hear from you.