Communications and Stakeholder Engagement

South London Mental Health and Community Partnership (SLP)

Launching and growing a NHS first

A unique partnership of three NHS Mental Health Trusts – working in collaboration not competition – at scale across South London’s 3.7 million people.

Developing and delivering its first ever communications strategy meant working at all levels, from senior management, clinical directors to corporate staff and specialist ward and community nurses.

Internal communications across 10,000+ staff, and external stakeholder engagement across 12 Boroughs, 12 CCGs, 2 ICSs, social care and other public services, was key to getting people working together in new ways to improve services at scale for the most challenging and complex mental health patients.

I deployed a range of reputation management approaches from internal and external introductory and pathway development events (online and F2F), social media presence, senior leadership comms and events, syndicated internal and corporate external content across organisations and boundaries.

Alongside this I launched and enabled large scale £100m+ annual new transformation programmes to flourish for complex, forensic, children and young people’s mental health care, and a unique joint nursing development programme.

I secured our target sector recognition including HSJ, Nursing Times and Royal Society of Psychiatrists awards accolades; regular best practice content in CQC, NHSE and NHSI national initiatives; and support across staff and external health and care partners – transforming patient outcomes for these cohorts across South London.

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust

Creating a communications and engagement strategy for Warneford Park – Oxford’s world-class centre for Mental Health and Brain Sciences

• Consultancy to develop first communications and engagement strategy for a proposed pioneering joint Oxford Health, University of Oxford and philanthropist £500m new hospital, life sciences R&D hub and business incubator, and higher education-clinical research facility.
• Developing and co-creating new brand and benefits proposition, messaging platform, and multi-stakeholder engagement approach in complex political, funding and partnership environment
• Central strand of work in developing Outline Business Case for government’s New Hospitals Programme
• Reporting directly to programme board comprising Trust and University C-suite members, investors, senior academics and clinicians, chaired by former Home Office Permanent Secretary

Royal United Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Bath (RUH)

Modernisation Programme

A short-term contract developing and launching a crucial 12-month communications and engagement campaign to secure wide support for the Trust’s ambitious new strategy £450m bid to the government’s New Hospitals Programme (part of the Health Infrastructure Plan).

This involved working at pace in a complicated stakeholder environment of staff, patients, public, politicians and an emerging ICS, along with neighbouring Trusts, local authorities and CCGs, ICSs. I developed a new messaging platform, comprehensive stakeholder engagement and communications plan, and worked to agile launch at speed before local elections purdah began.

Joined-up working with the Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire (BSW) ICS, and consultations for its Shaping a Healthier Future strategy, ensured a fully co-ordinated approach which made sense to staff, local authorities, the third sector and patients, to move at speed so RUH could submit its Outline Business Case.

St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Transformation Programme

Developing internal and external communications and engagement strategy for this high profile £880m turnover London NHS Trust’s recovery and transformation programmes – helping it exit financial and quality special measures.

Large-scale transformation, engaging and driving change across 9,500+ staff, including key clinical leaders, patients; the public and external stakeholders including GPs, commissioners and national NHS regulators.

I introduced new approaches including large-scale multi-disciplinary Developing Change events, innovation and engagement app, patient experience panel, video (social media, internal comms). I created and delivered engagement campaigns to support clinical, operational and organisational change in Outpatients, Theatres, A&E, Elective Care Recovery, Data Quality, Income Recovery, Clinical Safety and more.

Results included:
• Reduced missed Outpatients appointments) by 4.5%
• Clinical outcome recording increased from <50 to 90%; returned to RTT reporting
• Outpatient clinics and services successfully moved off-site, and facilities closed with zero patient complaints
• Improved theatre (surgery) productivity
• CQC rating improved from ‘inadequate’ to ‘requiring improvement’
• New relationships forged with GPs across five boroughs through first ever proactive outreach programme
• Recognised by Department of Health and NHS England for best practice comms in contentious overseas patient charging; led national workshop

Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association

Qualitative research to better understand influential national stakeholders’ views

How well was one of the UK’s key voices for the £multi-billions pensions industry representing its member firms? Does it effectively inform and influence government policy? How is the Pension and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) truly perceived by senior level key stakeholders?

After developing a focussed new survey for this complex industry, we undertook a series of in-depth 30-60 minutes’ telephone interviews to find out.

A key part of the work was initial engagement to secure diary time with leading MPs, members of the House of Lords, financial services sector regulators, and other influential professional bodies and thought leaders – convincing them of the importance and value of their time and views.

Detailed conversations with many key stakeholders informed our report, which covered broad perceptions and corporate reputation, specific policy areas, opportunities to improve and develop all aspects of its public affairs and policy work, competitor benchmarking, and assessing the influence and importance the PLSA has in shaping the national agenda.

The research and resulting report was highly valued and shared across the organisation including at Board level. Follow-up briefing meetings took deep dives into the anonymised research and helped identify actions and opportunities to add even more value, for a highly-regarded in-house team.

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Technology

Organisational transformation and reputation

Developing and launch a new internal comms strategy for £250m directorate of this large government department, which manages the IT estate for some 90,000 staff. This contract included advising senior civil servants on internal communications and engagement, and developing behaviour change and technology adoption campaigns across DWP.

Key achievements included:
• 10% increase in annual employee engagement index score for division
• Launched Digital Workplace brand and campaign driving new ways of working
• Introduced new engagement approaches and channels including blogs, video, data visualization/infographics and virtual teleconferences for large, distributed teams

What clients say

David is a fantastic team player who is generous in sharing his knowledge and experience. This enabled the leadership team to drive the development of an ambitious and dynamic transformational agenda that has improved patient outcomes and led to reduced waits and greater choice about where care is provided.

He embraced innovation to support cohesive team working throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. His determination to effectively communicate with every layer of the organisation in numerous ways, has meant a wider understanding of the benefits of partnership working has increased ten-fold.

David is tenacious in his capacity to find opportunities to make a difference. He makes connections and undertakes research to add extra value to whatever programme he’s leading. This is complemented by his ability to rapidly build relationships with key stakeholders and nurture these in order to strengthen wider collaboration.

If you want something doing rapidly and spot on, ask David. He never fails to deliver. His work is thorough, well researched and conveyed in a straightforward manner that can’t help but engage you.

Regardless of the complexity, David rapidly evaluates the issues and convey the key elements of a case for change in a concise manner.

Jeremy Walsh Managing Director, South London Mental Health and Community Partnership

I have worked with David in local government and the NHS and seen his commitment first-hand to making a difference, working with frontline public services in challenging inner South London boroughs. He develops and executes effective communications and engagement strategies. Importantly has the relationship building abilities needed to gain internal and external stakeholders’ support for key organisational projects, change programmes, and buy-in to effectively involving staff and citizens.

As an interim senior manager, David hit the ground running and delivered from day one against a challenging brief at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. He recruited and built a new team, reviewed and appointed two new agencies and most importantly developed and cemented relationships with key partners at a senior level. In a short space of time, David developed and launched new engagement strategies for our multi-million pound capital development and modernisation programmes, putting communications back on track which allowed the incoming team to get ahead of the curve.

Ranjeet Kaile Executive Director of Communications, Stakeholder Engagement and Public Affairs, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and Director of Communications and Engagement, South East London Integrated Care Board
Formerly Head of Communications and Engagement, London Borough of Lambeth

David developed and delivered successful communications and engagement plans for some of our key projects at St George’s during a hugely challenging time. His approach and work with clinicians, operational staff, external stakeholders and the corporate comms team made a real impact in supporting improvement. I appreciated his support across many campaigns – from operating theatres improvement to reducing nursing vacancies, key clinical safety change programmes to outpatients’ transformation and reducing missed appointments.

Chris Rolfe Director of Communications, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

David has provided strategic communications expertise to me in my capacity as Programme Director at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and RUH on major capital programmes. He has a remarkable ability to very quickly understand the key communication and stakeholder issues and deliver a communications approach to support the programme delivery. David works at a high tempo pace and every time that I have worked with him, he has added value from day one.

David is a consummate professional who commands the respect of those that work with him. His gravitas, skill and experience make him a key player in delivering major change.

Simon Cook Programme Director, Bath Royal United Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (RUH)
Programme Director, University of Oxford and Oxford Health NHS FT Warneford Park capital development programme
Formerly Programme Director, South London and Maudsley NHS FT Capital Programmes

I have now had the privilege to work with David on a number of complex, and sometimes contentious, major programmes. He has the ability to rapidly forge strong stakeholder relationships at all levels of the organisation - internally and externally - to support the development and delivery of the major programmes. He quickly wins over trust and these relationships ensure difficult conversations can be progressed when needed and ultimately, he gains buy-in to solutions.

David rapidly understands the brief and supports the development of strategy and is able to advise and guide in terms of approach. He brilliantly brings the team together.

We have worked on a challenging financial turnaround, establishment of a multi-agency partnership, and the building of a system business case to optimise a multi-agency patient pathway solution. David creates the golden thread. He is an absolute asset.

Jane Paice Senior NHS Programme Director

David is a communications and engagement consultant with a rare combination of creativity, understanding of complex transformation, and ability to generate simple and effective communications, and design effective engagement events. His insights from quality research, development and testing of ideas with others, and understanding the challenges of transformation, led to big shifts in understanding of problems, greater ownership within staff directly impacted by changes, and better outcomes than we could have expected.

This success rightly earned him national acclaim for his work on this and other programmes he was involved in at St George’s. I have and will continue to work with David when I can, in the future.

Steve Sewell NHS Interim Programme Director (inc St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust)

07976 658208

david@davidroseconsultancy.com