Director of Midwifery

Here at East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust,

Our mission is: Providing high-quality, compassionate care for our communities

Our vision to 2030 is: To be trusted to provide consistently outstanding care and exemplary service

Job overview

We are seeking an inspiring and forward-thinking Director of Midwifery to lead our teams in delivering exceptional care and achieving our strategic ambitions.

This is a unique opportunity for an innovative and collaborative leader who is passionate about making a difference. You will bring the drive, energy, compassion, and resilience needed to shape a culture where women and families receive outstanding care and where our teams are empowered to thrive, grow and care together.

With proven experience operating at a senior strategic level, you will use your exceptional leadership skills to influence and drive improvements both within our organisation and across wider system and national networks.

If you're ready to play a key role in leading transformational change and delivering excellence in midwifery care, we would love to hear from you.

Main duties of the job

Above all else, the Director of Midwifery will embody our values – focused on patients, continuously improving, and innovating through collaboration and teamwork, striving for excellence, and being respectful of others and the role that they play in delivering and receiving healthcare across the county.

The Director of Midwifery & Women’s Services is a key position, professionally accountable to the Chief Nurse with a prime focus on the strategic delivery of high standards of women’s care across integrated care pathways and services.

The role involves working in partnership with other organisations in the provision and planning of universal health services, taking forward national polices for maternity services to develop a long-term strategic vision that enables high quality and sustainable services.

You will have overall responsibility for the strategic and operational clinical safety standards.

Working for our organisation

East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust is a very special organisation which has big ambitions for the future. Our ability to be flexible and innovative in the way in which we work and deliver our services to our patients has never been more important, so we need individuals with the right blend of skills, experience, and a genuine desire to help our organisation succeed.

We continue to undergo significant cultural and organisational transformation, and we are 1 year into a partnership with the Virginia Mason Institute, which will embed a lean-based quality management system across the Trust. We are also in the process of applying for Teaching Hospital status with the support of our academic partners including the University of Hertfordshire, the University of Cambridge, and University College London.

We particularly welcome applications from black and minority ethnic communities, women and disabled people who we know are under-represented in senior NHS roles.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see the attached Job Description and Person Specification applicant pack for further detailed information regarding this role.

Person specification

Qualifications/Experience

• Registered Midwife
• Preferably graduate level, preferably combined with a Masters.
• Through testing demonstrate sound numeric and verbal reasoning
• Evidence of continuing professional development
• Experience of working across organisational boundaries.
• Experience of a senior operational management role, within a midwifery setting
• Experience of leading services which realise quality, cost, and delivery benefits
• Experience of managing significant financial resources.
• Experience and skills in financial analysis integrated with quality and activity data applied to service decision making.
• Experience of leading and delivering complex projects to an agreed project plan
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• Experience and evidence of strategic translation into sound financial and operational plans
• Experience of developing and implementing strategic direction
• Significant management and clinical leadership experience at senior level within an NHS Trust
• Operational management and clinical leadership experience of working in an acute setting would be highly beneficial.
• Excellent understanding of wider NHS and Health inequalities agenda.
• Experience and understanding of equality, diversity, and inclusion agenda. Able to actively support the development of a culture that recognises and promotes equality, values, diversity and actively leads by example in deploying these qualities
• Understands the impact on equality, diversity, and inclusion issues in all aspects of services delivery and planning.

Competencies

• Translating strategy into action
• Planning and organising
• Managing people
• Customer focus
• Decision making and influencing
• Evidence of working/understanding a devolved management system

Functional

• Project management
• Continuous improvement
• Organisation development
• Communication planning
• Performance management
• Financial management

Behavioural

• Ownership, personal responsibility, and accountability - for delivering commitments.
• Collaboration and involvement – with cross divisional teams/across the Trust
• Stakeholder relationship building – internally Engaging and motivational – support to teams; recognition of great performance
• Inspirational leadership – credible, respected, and knowledgeable.
• Followership and leadership – tenacious, consistently follows through decisions made.
• Gravitas and integrity – building confidence and assurance.
• Ambitious – “to develop/grow the business”.

Our values

We want our staff to believe in, demonstrate and live our values in everything we do.

Include

We value the diversity and experience of our community colleagues and partners, creating relationships and climates that provide an opportunity to share, collaborate and grow together.

Respect

We create a safe environment where we are curious of the lived experience of others, seek out best practice and are open to listening and hearing new ideas.

Improve

We are committed to consistently delivering excellent services and continuously looking to improve through a creative workforce that feels empowered to act in service of our shared purpose.

Committed to our Community

In particular we encourage applications from candidates with disabilities, and candidates from Black, Asian and Minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds who are currently under-represented in various parts of our workforce .

We understand the importance of balancing work and home life. We are committed to support flexible working for our staff wherever possible and all our employees are given the opportunity to discuss potential for flexible working.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident employer and achieved our status in 2019.

We will remove barriers that prospective candidates might face at any stage of our recruitment process. If you have a disability and would like the advert in an alternative format, or would like to talk about how we can adjust the interview process to best support you, please contact us by emailing [email protected]

We are also proud to support our UK armed forces by supporting Reservists, Cadet Instructors, Veterans and military spouses/partners into employment and offering supportive policies that value their contribution to the community and to our Trust.

Our approach is inclusive, recognizing diverse challenges and creating a supportive environment where carers feel valued.

When you apply...

Please note that vacancies may close prior to the advertised closing date in certain circumstances. Please ensure that you make your application as soon as possible.

All correspondence relating to vacancies will be via the e-mail address you have provided on your application form. Some servers automatically send e-mails to your junk mail so please check as well as your inbox.

As a publicly funded employer, we need to ensure we utilise our funds responsibly, this may mean we are unable to support sponsorship required to gain the right to work for particular positions. We strongly advise you to contact the line manager or a member of the Resourcing Team before applying to confirm if we will be able to support with sponsorship for that post.

King's Trust Support

Please contact Enquiries.H&[email protected] for support.

Secondments/Fixed term

Where a vacancy is advertised as a temporary position, the duration will be specified in the advert. If the vacancy becomes permanent towards the end of the specified duration, the successful applicant may not be required to re-apply and can be slotted into the role on a permanent basis if appropriate.

If you are an internal applicant applying for a temporary working arrangement, please see the attached notes on secondments.