In the two years since becoming partners, Bramble Hub and Verve Communications have won a series of NHS projects. These have ranged from short contracts to produce communications material, all the way up to quarter-million-pound strategic transformation projects spanning a year or more.

Asked to pick a favourite project, Clive Caseley - who joined Verve as an associate 16 years ago before becoming a partner - thinks for a moment, and then mentions an assignment he carried out last year for the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board which, with more than 17,000 employees, is one of the largest organisations in the NHS. Clive worked for six months as the Health Board's interim director of Partnership, Engagements and Communication, reporting to the CEO. Clive's role was to advise the leadership team on strategic communications, which included handling a series of historical inquiry reports, especially in mental health, and developing a positive narrative for how things have changed. "It was a really interesting role," he recalls. "The Welsh system is more advanced than the English in terms of integration within health care and commissioner/provider Health Boards. The political culture and set up in Wales is also very different."

Clive Caseley, Verve Communications

Clive also mentions a project to support the transformation of orthopedic services at a London NHS trust.

"That one was really interesting. The clinicians knew that creating a specialist centre for orthopedic treatment would lead to a long list of benefits for patients. If you have your surgery at a location that only does planned orthopedic surgery, you don't have a mix of with acute care in the same centre. So your operation is less likely to be bumped because emergency care is using the same theatres and you're less likely to pick up an infection. The teams working at an elective centre do more of the same types of things, which means outcomes are generally better. It's a good model, but it involved a massive change programme. One of our team worked on pre-consultation, picking up issues for patients and supporting clinical redesign. Then we supported the consultation and an integrated impact assessment, which examined implications for accessibility and travel, which can be a big deal in orthopedics: how easy is it for disabled people, older people, poorer people to get to the centre? That’s a good end-to-end example."

Verve began a quarter-century ago as Renaissance, offering political advice and communications services to local authorities. Clive had been working at Ealing Council and knew the business of local government well. The switch towards a focus on NHS and integrated care providers gave the business scope to work on more complex and more challenging projects.

"Most of what we do is a mix of supporting big programmes, communications around transformational projects, a very broad range of public sector comms. The variety of work makes this an interesting company to work for. We just delivered a project around mental wellbeing for NHS staff in south-east London. And the public-facing projects are often very rewarding because you can see fast, tangible results. We ran a PPC (pay-per-click advertising) campaign for a Covid vaccination to publicise the drop-in centre at the Saracens [rugby] ground in north London. It went from being one of the lowest attended centres in the region to among the highest. We’re doing a lot of work at the moment around workforce development. Quite a lot of that is digital. In south-east and south-west London, we’ve developed a digital hub that routes people into training and first job opportunities in the NHS."

As with others of Bramble Hub's small-and-specialist consulting partners, it's the people that makes working at Verve rewarding. Verve currently has seven people working on projects – a mix of staff and long-term associates. "It's a good model: we've got access to really great people," Clive says.

When it's suggested that the PR industry is sometimes not known for the straightest of talking, Clive agrees.

"One of the things I put really big store by is that we will be honest with people – to tell it like it is. Our ethos is that we won’t sell people things they don’t need, and we won’t give advice that we don’t believe in. I think that 20 years ago, clients had a clearer idea of what they were buying, and digital hasn't helped clarify things. It's why organisations need trusted partners, and probably why our referral business is so strong.”

Public sector organisations can buy Verve's services from Bramble Hub via a number of frameworks. For more information, have a look at their partner page.