Job summary
- Main area
- Maternity
- Grade
- Band 8c
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time - 37.5 hours per week
- Job ref
- 318-25-T0653
- Employer
- Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- Trustwide
- Town
- Gloucestershire
- Salary
- £76,965 - £88,682 (pa pro rata if part-time)
- Salary period
- Yearly
- Closing
- 13/10/2025 23:59
Employer heading
Head of Midwifery, Band 8c- Maternity
Band 8c
At Gloucestershire Hospitals, our people are at the heart of everything we do. As the largest employer in the county, we’re proud to provide outstanding acute, elective, and specialist services to over 650,000 people across our county. Whether you’re just beginning your NHS journey or taking the next step in your career, this is an exciting time to join us. We’re investing in innovation, research, and transformation, with over 100 active clinical studies and major developments underway across our two district hospitals.
You can expect a welcoming and supportive culture and you’ll be supported by passionate colleagues who care deeply about teamwork, development, and delivering exceptional care. We offer structured development programmes, mentoring, and leadership opportunities to help you grow in your career. Gloucestershire has the perfect mix of culture, countryside, and community. With excellent schools, transport links, and access to award-winning green spaces, it’s a great place to live and work.
We value the diversity of our workforce and are committed to creating an environment where everyone feels they belong.
Be part of Gloucestershire Hospitals, explore your future with us today.
Job overview
Champion Outstanding Maternity Care.
We are seeking a passionate, visionary, and dynamic Head of Midwifery to lead our maternity services at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. This is an exciting opportunity for a senior midwifery leader with a proven track record of delivering safe, personalised, and high-quality care to take on a pivotal role in shaping the future of maternity care in our Trust.
Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust operates across two main hospital sites in Cheltenham and Gloucester and is one of the largest NHS trusts in the country. Our maternity services offer a full range of choices to women and their families, including:
- Freestanding Birth Centres
- Home Birth Services
- Consultant-Led Unit and Alongside Birth Unit
In addition, we provide maternity care at Stroud Maternity Unit and deliver community midwifery services across a wide geographical area. Across Gloucestershire, we support approximately 6,000 births each year.
Main duties of the job
As our Head of Midwifery, you will be a key member of the quadrumvirate leadership team, responsible for the operational leadership of midwifery services. You will work closely with the Director of Midwifery and Clinical Speciality Director (Obstetrics) to ensure high standards of safe clinical midwifery practice, compliance with national standards and safety ambitions, and a positive experience for women, birthing people, babies, and families.
You will also have a key role in implementing the local Perinatal Transformational Programme, supporting the local recommendations and actions, and ensuring your service is responsive, inclusive, and driving for continuous improvement.
What We’re Looking For
- Registered Midwife with current NMC registration.
- Extensive senior leadership experience in maternity services.
- In-depth knowledge of national perinatal transformation programmes and safety ambitions
-Proven ability to lead change, manage complex teams, and deliver measurable improvement.
Excellent communication, strategic thinking, and people management skills.
Working for our organisation
As our most valuable asset, we understand that happy, fulfilled staff will offer their best, and we aim to achieve this by providing a supportive team approach.
- A supportive and inclusive leadership culture.
- Opportunities for continued professional development and executive mentoring.
- Access to staff benefits including NHS pension, flexible working, and health & wellbeing programmes.
- The chance to truly make a difference in the lives of women and families.
Ready to lead a team committed to improvement, safety and excellence in maternity care? We’d love to hear from you.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
The post holder is a key member of the senior leadership team within the Division and works under the professional direction of the Director of Midwifery to provide guidance, support and leadership to all midwifery and nursing staff to ensure patient safety, service quality and excellent patient experience is consistently maintained.
Accountable for ensuring the appropriate management and leadership of the midwifery and nursing teams, holding Matrons, ward and department leaders and clinical practitioners to account to ensure that organisational performance indicators and regulatory standards and quality indicators are monitored and appropriate action is taken according to results.
Provides both the professional, strategic and operational leadership across the maternity service to ensure optimum standards of care and service are delivered through effective management of human, financial and physical resources.
Focus is on the provision of responsive, compassionate, visible leadership for wards and departments within maternity and a range of services which are both hospital and community based.
Acts as a strong patient advocate ensuring that a culture of continuous improvement and learning is supported in order to drive quality care delivery across the division and facilitate the development of clinical practice, to ensure excellent care.
Develops services through the implementation of innovative strategies to ensure an empowered workforce at all levels that is fit for purpose and equipped to deliver excellence in care standards, including securing the workforce for the future.
Proactive, makes recommendations, facilitates and contributes to the management of change to ensure services are patient and family focused, evidence based and provide high standards of clinical care; delivering service provision in line with national and local policy.
Ensures that all responsible midwifery and nursing staff are effectively developed to achieve their own and their departmental objectives which in turn will meet the Trust’s strategic priorities, commissioning intentions and CQC requirements.
Assists the Director of Midwifery in the implementation of the corporate midwifery agenda; taking a specific strategic lead where requested on allocated cross divisional and corporate roles.
Areas of key focus will change over time, but currently key outcome measures are:
Achieving KPI associated with the National Maternity and Neonatal Transformation programme, particularly around the learnings from national reports to drive change
Undertaking a six-monthly Midwifery and Multidisciplinary staffing review and leading on the associated workforce plan.
Engagement of the whole perinatal team in monitoring and reporting of clinical outcomes and patient experience across the service.
Works with the Director of Midwifery and the Speciality Triumvirate to develop an annual business plan which is in line with commissioning intentions and organisational objectives.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Active registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Council
- Educated to Masters level
- Evidence of ongoing professional development through maintenance of professional portfolio and registration revalidation
- Evidence of leadership qualification with NHS Leadership Academy or similar
Knowledge/ Skills
Essential criteria
- Able to prioritise own workload and that of others as appropriate
- Able to lead teams to deliver change
- Personally resilient and able to manage complexity and work in an ambiguous or changing environment
- Excellent presentational, communication and interpersonal skills
- Able to manage a large staffing group and deal with complex staffing issues
- Up to date knowledge of professional midwifery issues
- In-depth understanding of the national perinatal transformation agenda and safety ambitions
- Able to implement effective recruitment and retention strategies
- Specialist knowledge at post-registration level in relevant specialist areas
- Demonstrates and understanding of the functions of the NMC Code of Professional Conduct and responsible for its application to clinical practice and professional leadership
- Able to work across professional and organisational boundaries with highly developed negotiation and influencing skills
- Good interviewing and appraisal skills
- Analytical, numeric and critical reasoning skills
- Highly developed presentation skills to disseminate and present complex information
- Values diversity and difference, operates with integrity and openness
Experience
Essential criteria
- Experienced Midwife with extensive experience in senior leadership roles
- Operational Service Management at 8a or above at a senior level in an Acute hospital
- Expert midwifery practitioner
- Experience of leading transformational change
- An understanding and appreciation of the relationship between Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Gloucestershire Local Maternity and Neonatal System.
Desirable criteria
- Experience of research/audit and benchmarking utilising the results to improve the quality of care
- Experience of successful change management and/or service redesign
Employer certification / accreditation badges
Applicant requirements
You must have appropriate UK professional registration.
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Lisa Stephens
- Job title
- Director of Midwifery
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 0300 422 2380
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