Health
At a time of unprecedented change facing the NHS, there is much focus on the future of healthcare: patients will become more active, empowered and involved in their own care.
There are new challenges ahead for providers. We have supported both East London and the City Mental Health Trust and Barnet, Enfield and Haringey MHT through their consultation to become Foundation Trusts. We also developed and implemented a strategy to recruit more than 2,000 members. Verve supports A Picture of Health for south east London (see case study below) and provides interim communications support to PCTs.
Whether you are consulting on service provision or setting up a new LINKs service, Verve can help you bridge the gap with local communities.
East London and the City Mental Health Trust
The Trust was one of the first mental health trusts to seek Foundation status and Verve was chosen to advise and assist it to develop its consultation strategy and support its programme of community engagement. The diverse nature of East London's local population meant ensuring the involvement of faith, BME and community organisations throughout the consultation. The Trust received a high level of response from all groups compared with its peers.
John Wilkins, the Foundation Trust Project Director, said
“Verve was able to use its expertise in stakeholder and community engagement to generate real interest and excitement among the Trust's partners, resulting in a positive local response to their plans.”
A Picture of Health and Healthcare for London
We provided specialist support for consultation on this NHS reconfiguration covering Bromley, Bexley, Lewisham and Greenwich. We also delivered the Healthcare for London consultation in these boroughs, plus Lambeth and Southwark.
The Verve team arranged deliberative meetings with representatives of many different networks to test responses to consultation issues. We organised public meetings, networking meetings with community organisations and engaged with hard-to-reach groups across four boroughs. Our brief included providing briefings for clinicians and spokespeople, handling media relations and creating a wide range of publicity material. We worked closely on the Integrated Impact Assessment of proposals, which evaluates what each option for change meant for disadvantaged groups.
The programme received the national NHS award for Best Communication Leadership in 2009.
Oliver Lake, Director of Corporate Affairs for the NHS SE London Sector, said
“Verve hit the ground running, bringing in a team of high-calibre professionals to support the programme extremely quickly”