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.
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.
Gloucestershire Hospitals provide acute hospital services from two large district general hospitals, Gloucestershire Royal and Cheltenham General, as well as maternity services at Stroud Maternity.
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 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 family-centred care for women and families across the county, supporting 6,000 births a year. Become part of a community of more than 2,000 nursing and midwifery professionals who bring expertise, compassion and ambition to everything they do. The service includes consultant-led maternity units Gloucestershire Royal 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.
The Director of Midwifery is a highly autonomous role and will be responsible and accountable for the provision of midwifery services across the Trust, they will provide expert support to the Trust and lead and advocate for safe, effective, sustainable and responsive maternity and neonatal care for all women, babies, birthing people and their families. The post holder is required to advise on leading and informing complex transformation and improvement, through collaboration and mature partnership working. Accountable to the Chief Nurse, the Director of Midwifery is responsible for improving the strategic leadership of the midwifery workforce and the overarching safety and quality of the services alongside the Divisional Leadership Team. The principal goal of the post is to drive forward the maternity improvement and safety activities across the service which then demonstrates improved clinical outcomes. The post holder will work closely with the Local Maternity and Neonatal Network (LMNS) / Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board (ICB) and with the clinical and professional Director of Midwifery Networks.
Key drivers for change are our well established improvement plans, actions from our CQC inspection and the overall delivery of our divisional vision ‘excellence in care as measured by our outcomes, patient experience and our staff values’.
Responsible and accountable for the improvement of reporting frameworks for the maternity service and neonatal service. This will involve developing key quality indicators and measures and ensuring statutory and regulatory aspects of risk, safeguarding, complaints, safety, feedback and clinical governance are delivered across all of the maternity services. The post holder will have accountability and responsibility for the strategic and operational development of the departmental plans and the programme of work will be underpinned by the delivery of short, medium and long term objectives.
Interview Date: 16th December 2025
Contact Details
Sharon Elliott (Executive Assistant to the Chief Nurse)
sharon.elliott10@nhs.net
07977 787173
Please arrange an informal conversation with Matt Holdaway, Chief Nurse by contacting Sharon Elliott, Executive Assistant
