As the Playlist for Life charity launches a search for a new CEO, Ken Mann meets its founder Sally Magnusson

Treatments for dementia continue to challenge the globe's best medical scientists as both people with dementia and their families experience an ever accelerating emotional roller-coaster. Music may seem an unlikely accessory to treatment programmes yet its power to bring meaningful pleasure, even in late stage dementia, has proved remarkable.

There is no near-term medical breakthrough for this progressive and most heart-rending group of illnesses. The NHS predicts the number of cases in the UK will rise above one million within the next six years, largely as a consequence of the trend towards people living longer. More than 850,000 people are already diagnosed.

Searching for tangible positives from an otherwise dark set of negative outlooks provides an important level of relief, as the Scottish-based charity Playlist for Life has discovered.

Founded and chaired by the broadcaster and journalist Sally Magnusson, it is behind the ingenious idea that playing favourite tracks to people with dementia via an iPod supports the quality of life attainable on an individual basis.

Perhaps the best independent assessment of the charity's value is the immediate need to search for a chief executive to drive forward its aim of expanding its impact and embracing opportunities across Britain.

For Magnusson the position is clearly no sinecure. She plays an active role in the charity's work after hard personal experience of the degenerative nature of dementia, having helped to nurse her mother.

Music often underpins memories of life events for all of us - not all of them good. However Magnusson generally refutes the notion that such exposure can bring gloomier recollections as much as it can reignite the joyful aspects of the past.

She says: "My own mother, whom I helped to nurse to the very end of her life, never failed to respond to the songs she had always loved singing with us. They soothed her and energised her and rooted her in a familiar place when she felt afraid and bewildered. We sang her, literally, to death.

"I have watched other people in the very last stages of dementia, who at first appear to be completely 'out of it', responding to familiar tunes with a foot tap, a smile and a spark returning to their eye. We advise people not to persist with a particular piece of music, if it does indeed appear to be causing genuine distress.

"But often tears are the only form of expression a person with advanced dementia has left and, if you hold and stroke a loved one through it, you can come together to a good place.

"Music brings all of us to tears at times - and it doesn't necessarily mean we want it to stop or that it is not pleasurable. But the key thing is to know the person you are offering the music to very well, respond to signals, try different tracks on the personal playlist at different times and hold this person very tight." Over the past two years since its launch, Playlist for Life has grown. Having raised more than £160,000 and achieved much in a short space of time, its voluntary board of trustees can no longer on their own manage a demanding growth agenda and its governance elements.

Fundraising will be important - the main sources of income are public donations, charitable foundations and income from face-to-face workplace training events - but the selected CEO candidate will be focused more on advancing a practical message and the work associated with it.

Encouraging research and evaluation, so that the essence of its benefit can ultimately be embedded in health and social care practice across the UK, is fundamental to the growth plan.

"We have been staggered by people's generosity, but it's not all about money and donations for us," its chair is happy to concede. "We are an 'enabling' charity. We encourage people to do this themselves - families, care home staff, nurses, carers in day centres, volunteers and the many folk in the earlier stages of dementia who can derive great pleasure and comfort from organising their own playlist.

"There is a large and growing body of scientific evidence, which shows that if people with dementia are offered frequent access to the music in which their past experience and memories are embedded, it can improve their present mood, their awareness and their ability to understand and think.

"It can also help their sense of identity and independence.

"No one argues that it is a panacea or in any sense a cure, but for periods at a time it has been shown that people are enabled to feel more like themselves. We reference much of the available scientific literature on our website.

"Playlist for Life is itself collaborating with researchers at Glasgow Caledonian University to assess the efficacy of the intervention in various care settings, including in acute care, where there is world-leading research being done by one of our associates, PhD student Anna Paisley. We are also just beginning a project to develop and evaluate a Playlist for Life app."

Education, in the sense of creating greater understanding of the sense of self-recognition offered by music memories, is a principal theme. An e-Learning package for purchase by care organisations will be available next month, followed by a free DVD for families. The team already travels the UK to deliver training.