Job summary
This is your moment to shape the future of maternity care for an entire county. Gloucestershire is undertaking its first full maternity health needs assessment in a decade, and we are seeking an exceptional Director of Midwifery to lead with vision and purpose.
Our maternity teams are skilled, committed and proud of the care they provide. Like many services nationally, we have faced complexity and pressure in recent years. We are looking for a strategic leader who can bring clarity, confidence and renewed momentum as we continue our redesign and improvement.
As Director of Midwifery, you will be the professional voice for safe, effective and responsive care. You will set the strategic direction, guide service transformation and ensure that women, birthing people and families remain central to every decision. You will work closely with the LMNS, the Gloucestershire ICB and wider midwifery networks to turn insight into action and ambition into measurable progress.
This is a genuinely autonomous role, offering the freedom to shape priorities and steer the service through a defining period. It also comes at a key transition point: our Head of Midwifery is retiring, giving the incoming Director the opportunity to appoint their senior team and build a structure that supports long-term stability and improvement.
If you are motivated by purpose, excited by transformation and ready to lead service into its next chapter, we would be delighted to receive your application.
Main duties of the job
Inspire shared purpose and ensure the maternity and neonatal strategy is developed with key stakeholders and delivered efficiently with the Divisional Leadership Team. Lead with care and compassion. Provide expert support for sustainable workforce planning, including education and training. Ensure safe staffing with clear escalation and mitigation. Enable staff to raise concerns and ensure accountability for acting on issues. Seek diverse information to generate ideas and make effective plans for improvement. Lead clinical governance, ensuring the Trust Board has oversight of quality and performance and that lessons from investigations are implemented.Be accountable to the Director of Quality and Chief Nurse for professional midwifery leadership and work with them to provide assurance to the Trust Board on the quality of care. Drive continuous improvement and transformational change. Work closely with the Maternity Voices Partnership, leading experience-improvement programmes using co-design. Understand system working and pathway interdependencies. Provide timely expert maternity, neonatal and midwifery advice to senior leaders and the Executive Team. Support clinical engagement and co-design across maternity and neonatal services. Contribute to national maternity and neonatal priorities and help develop sustainable workforce solutions aligned to future models of care. Proactively manage key risks within strong clinical governance structures.
About us
Gloucestershire Hospitals provide acute hospital services from two large district general hospitals, Gloucestershire Royal Hospital and Cheltenham General Hospital, as well as maternity services at Stroud Maternity Hospital.
With a team of over 9,000 employees, representing over 95 nationalities, we are proud to be the largest employer in Gloucestershire. Bringing together a mix of cultures and experiences to the care that we deliver. The Trust continues to work closely with partners and local communities to improve health and wellbeing to ensure access to services.
We take pride in placing people at the centre of everything we do, working together as a united team. Driven by a shared ambition to continually grow, develop, and learn, we recognise and value every contribution. By combining our experience and skills, we not only support our vibrant, diverse communities, but also support one another.Our maternity services provide comprehensive, family-centred care for women and families across the county supporting around 6,000 births a year.
The service includes consultant-led maternity units Gloucestershire Royal Hospital alongside Stroud Maternity Unit, which offers midwife-led care and postnatal support. In addition, dedicated community midwifery teams deliver antenatal, postnatal and home birth services across a wide geographical area, ensuring continuity of care and choice for women.
Job description
Job responsibilities
(Please see the job description for full details)
For an informal conversation about the post please contact our Recruitment Consultant, Finn McNulty fmcnulty@hunter-healthcare.com or call 07966 006091.
Job description
Job responsibilities
(Please see the job description for full details)
For an informal conversation about the post please contact our Recruitment Consultant, Finn McNulty fmcnulty@hunter-healthcare.com or call 07966 006091.
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential
- Bachelor's degree
- Master's degree in a healthcare related subject
- Registered Midwife with the Nursing and Midwifery Council
- Evidence of sustained personal and professional development.
Experience
Essential
- Demonstrable capability and capacity as a senior leader in a large complex health care environment
- Good working knowledge and experience of clinical quality and improvement.
- Extensive experience of translating national policy into practice.
- Evidence of effective management of staff.
- Broad range of experience as Head of Midwifery.
- Experience of leading and delivering change and improvement on a Trust wide basis.
Knowledge
Essential
- In-depth understanding of the NHS, maternity, social care, and local authority 'landscape' and interdependencies.
- Appreciation of evidence and thinking relating to practices which reduce health inequality and improve maternity services.
- Highly developed communication skills with the ability to communicate on complex matters and difficult situations.
- Ability to provide and receive, convey, and present complex, sensitive and/or contentious information to large groups, responding openly to questions to ensure full understanding and engagement.
- Ability to communicate with clinical, academic and all levels of staff.
- Extensive successful experience in a demanding role or equivalent managerial role at a senior level within a complex organisation
- Ability to promote compassionate working practices and cultures that encourage and enable individuals and teams to thrive at organisation, partnership, and system levels.
- Experience of preparing papers, presentations and reports for Trust Board and the LMNS.
Skills and Attributes
Essential
- Leads with compassion and humility.
- Exceptional communication skills which engender community confidence, strong collaborations, and excellent partnership working.
- Coaching and mentoring skills
- Written - evidence of good presentation with clear, well-reasoned argument, appropriate degree of research and logical conclusions.
- Strong critical thinking and strategic problem solving: the ability to contribute to a joint strategic plan and undertake problem resolution and action.
- Analytical rigour and numerical competence
- Highly sophisticated leadership and influencing skills
- Ability to promote compassionate working practices and cultures that encourage and enable individuals and teams to thrive
- Resilience and stamina, and the ability to work at pace and deliver in a demanding and high-profile role
- Verbal - lucid, fluent, logical speaker, able to enthuse and hold the attention of the listener; able to influence a variety of audiences at a variety of levels of seniority (including unfamiliar and potentially antagonistic audiences, nationally or locally).
- Listening - evidence of willingness to listen, to show empathy where necessary and to indicate by responses, a willingness to properly consider alternative or different views
Personal Values
Essential
- Determination, perseverance, and resilience.
- Personal commitment to the values of the NHS Long Term Plan, the NHS People Plan, the NHS Constitution, the Nolan Principles and National Maternity Policy.
- Compassionate and collaborative leadership style, with a track record of improvements in equality, diversity, inclusion, and social justice.
- Lives by the values of openness and integrity and has created cultures where this thrives.
Other
Essential
- Ability to fulfil the travel and on call requirements
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential
- Bachelor's degree
- Master's degree in a healthcare related subject
- Registered Midwife with the Nursing and Midwifery Council
- Evidence of sustained personal and professional development.
Experience
Essential
- Demonstrable capability and capacity as a senior leader in a large complex health care environment
- Good working knowledge and experience of clinical quality and improvement.
- Extensive experience of translating national policy into practice.
- Evidence of effective management of staff.
- Broad range of experience as Head of Midwifery.
- Experience of leading and delivering change and improvement on a Trust wide basis.
Knowledge
Essential
- In-depth understanding of the NHS, maternity, social care, and local authority 'landscape' and interdependencies.
- Appreciation of evidence and thinking relating to practices which reduce health inequality and improve maternity services.
- Highly developed communication skills with the ability to communicate on complex matters and difficult situations.
- Ability to provide and receive, convey, and present complex, sensitive and/or contentious information to large groups, responding openly to questions to ensure full understanding and engagement.
- Ability to communicate with clinical, academic and all levels of staff.
- Extensive successful experience in a demanding role or equivalent managerial role at a senior level within a complex organisation
- Ability to promote compassionate working practices and cultures that encourage and enable individuals and teams to thrive at organisation, partnership, and system levels.
- Experience of preparing papers, presentations and reports for Trust Board and the LMNS.
Skills and Attributes
Essential
- Leads with compassion and humility.
- Exceptional communication skills which engender community confidence, strong collaborations, and excellent partnership working.
- Coaching and mentoring skills
- Written - evidence of good presentation with clear, well-reasoned argument, appropriate degree of research and logical conclusions.
- Strong critical thinking and strategic problem solving: the ability to contribute to a joint strategic plan and undertake problem resolution and action.
- Analytical rigour and numerical competence
- Highly sophisticated leadership and influencing skills
- Ability to promote compassionate working practices and cultures that encourage and enable individuals and teams to thrive
- Resilience and stamina, and the ability to work at pace and deliver in a demanding and high-profile role
- Verbal - lucid, fluent, logical speaker, able to enthuse and hold the attention of the listener; able to influence a variety of audiences at a variety of levels of seniority (including unfamiliar and potentially antagonistic audiences, nationally or locally).
- Listening - evidence of willingness to listen, to show empathy where necessary and to indicate by responses, a willingness to properly consider alternative or different views
Personal Values
Essential
- Determination, perseverance, and resilience.
- Personal commitment to the values of the NHS Long Term Plan, the NHS People Plan, the NHS Constitution, the Nolan Principles and National Maternity Policy.
- Compassionate and collaborative leadership style, with a track record of improvements in equality, diversity, inclusion, and social justice.
- Lives by the values of openness and integrity and has created cultures where this thrives.
Other
Essential
- Ability to fulfil the travel and on call requirements
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see
NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).
Additional information
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see
NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).
Employer details
Employer name
Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Address
Trustwide (Based at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, to work across all maternity sites)
Gloucestershire
GL1 3NN
Employer's website
https://www.gloshospitals.nhs.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)
