Director of Midwifery and Maternity Services

Director of Midwifery and Maternity Services

The Director of Midwifery and Maternity Services is the Trust's most senior midwifery professional, providing strategic, professional and operational leadership across all maternity services.

The postholder is accountable for ensuring the delivery of safe, high-quality, compassionate and equitable maternity care, with a strong focus on improving outcomes, experience and safety for women, babies and their families. This includes leadership of national maternity safety programmes, continuous improvement and assurance against regulatory and statutory requirements.

Working as a key member of the senior leadership team, the Director of Midwifery and Maternity Services will collaborate closely with obstetric, neonatal, paediatric, anaesthetic and corporate colleagues, as well as system partners, to lead service transformation and workforce sustainability across the maternity pathways.

Main duties of the job

- Act as the Trust's professional lead for Midwifery, setting and upholding standards of practice, education and professional development.
- Develop and deliver a clear strategic vision for maternity services aligned with Trust, ICB and national priorities.
- Provide expert advice to the Executive Team and Trust Board on maternity safety, quality and performance.
- Be accountable for the quality, safety, outcomes and experience of maternity services.
- Lead delivery and assurance of national maternity programmes.
- Ensure robust clinical governance systems, including incident management, learning reviews, audit, risk management and quality improvement.
- Promote a strong culture of openness, learning and psychological safety.
- Provide senior oversight of maternity services delivery, ensuring services are safe, effective and resilient.
- Lead workforce planning, recruitment and retention strategies.
- Champion compassionate leadership, staff wellbeing and inclusive working practices.
- Financial stewardship of maternity budgets and ensure delivery of financial plans.
- Monitor and respond to performance, quality and workforce data to drive improvements.
- Champion personalised, equitable and culturally competent care, addressing inequalities in outcomes and experience.
- Work in partnership with women, families, MNVP, LMNS and wider system partners, ensuring co‑production is embedded in service design and improvement.
- Represent the Trust at regional and national forums as required.

About us

A wide range of staff benefits are available to our staff including staff development, enrolment in the NHS pension scheme, auto‑enrolment to our Temporary Workforce Service, access to onsite nurseries. staff restaurants and accommodation.

In addition to an internal Occupational Health department, all staff also have access to free psychological support through our confidential Employee Assistance Programme. Onsite parking is available from only £50 a year.

There has never been a better time to join East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, submit your application today.

Statement on the Use of AI

We value the individuality that each candidate brings to the application process. While we understand that AI tools are widely available, we strongly discourage applicants from using AI-generated content when applying for jobs with us. We believe that your application should reflect your true skills, experiences, and motivations, which are best conveyed through your own words and unique perspective.

Using AI for your application may not accurately represent your knowledge, skills, and experience and may result in a disconnect between your qualifications and our assessment of your application.

We encourage applicants to take the time to thoughtfully complete their applications; by doing so, you allow us to better understand your true potential and ensure a fair and transparent evaluation of your application. Over reliance on AI-generated content may diminish your chance of success.

Job responsibilities

Please refer to the job description attached.

If you have any questions about this position please do not hesitate to contact us.

Person Specification

Qualifications

- Registered Midwife with active NMC registration
- Masters level qualification/training relevant to role
- Extensive strategic and senior level leadership qualification, training and experience.
- Mentoring/Coaching/Supervision qualification or training
- Project Management and Quality Improvement qualification or training

Experience

- Experience working in a senior strategic leadership position in NHS/Healthcare organisation.
- Substantial experience of maternity governance processes and structures
- A good understanding of the changing NHS environment and evidence of strategic working across the system/network
- Significant senior leader experience of clinical operations and able to demonstrate experience of: Quality/Service improvement and leading service changes Operational leadership People Management Financial management of business planning and management of resources Management of performance Quality assurance and management of risk
- Demonstrates evidence of working in partnership with other agencies, service users, carers, the public, regulators etc.

Skills

- Knowledge of NHS and professional issues particularly, key issues pertaining to midwifery and maternity services and thorough understanding of current national policy agenda
- Able to lead and develop maternity/midwifery excellence in clinical practice and demonstrate examples of service improvement/transformation
- Assertive, confident and effective with strong leadership skills, that influence negotiate, engage, inspire and motivate a workforce.
- Well developed communication and interpersonal skills and able to present information and write Board level papers
- Able to manage a team, handle conflict, coach and develop others
- Experience of out of hours operational management and on call training/skills.

Other

- Frequent involvement (both direct and indirect) in emotionally distressing process such as managing significant change including redeployment and redundancy, performance management, complex disciplinary, grievance and appeal procedures as well as responding to complaints

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.

£109,179 to £125,637 a yearper annum, pro rata

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