Director of Midwifery, Band 9

Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; Gloucester; On-site; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A healthcare provider in Gloucestershire seeks a Director of Midwifery to lead the strategic direction and transformation of maternity services. The role offers the opportunity to shape priorities and build a supportive team in a critical transition period. Candidates should have senior leadership experience in maternity services and a commitment to quality care.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in a senior leadership role within maternity services.
• Strong understanding of maternity governance and quality assurance.
• Ability to inspire and lead a diverse team.

Responsibilities

• Inspire shared purpose and develop maternity strategy.
• Lead clinical governance and manage quality performance.
• Provide expert maternity advice to senior leaders.
• Drive continuous improvement and transformational change.

Skills

Strategic leadership

Clinical governance

Workforce planning

Change management

Job description

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.

Responsibilities

• 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 the Organization

We deliver acute care across two large district general hospitals – Cheltenham General Hospital and Gloucestershire Royal Hospital – with maternity services also provided at Stroud Maternity Hospital. As the principal provider of secondary care in the county, Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust plays a central role in the health and wellbeing of our population.

At the heart of our organisation is a highly skilled and committed nursing, midwifery and care workforce. Joining us means becoming part of a community of more than 2,000 nursing and midwifery professionals who bring expertise, compassion and ambition to everything they do.

Our patients and families remain our constant focus, and it is the dedication of our nurses, midwives and care staff that ensures we deliver safe, high‑quality care and a positive experience for the people of Gloucestershire.