Head of Midwifery – Quality Assurance, Governance and Compliance

Job overview

We are seeking an exceptional Head of Midwifery – Quality Assurance, Governance and Compliance to join our maternity senior leadership team and help shape the next phase of safe, equitable and continuously improving care for women, birthing people, babies and families.

The opportunity

Working with delegated authority from the Director of Midwifery, you will provide strategic and operational leadership for maternity quality governance, patient safety, risk management, regulatory compliance and assurance. You will bring together intelligence from incidents, complaints, claims, inquests, audit, patient feedback, workforce indicators, training, clinical outcomes, inequalities data and external reviews to identify emerging risks, set improvement priorities and provide clear assurance from ward to Board.

You will lead the development of robust governance systems, evidence packs, dashboards and improvement plans; oversee preparedness for external scrutiny; and ensure national maternity standards and recommendations are translated into sustained improvements in practice. As a visible, compassionate and authoritative leader, you will provide expert advice and constructive challenge to senior clinical and operational colleagues, represent maternity services at Trust, regional and external forums, deputise for the Director of Midwifery as required and participate in the senior midwife on-call rota.

Main duties of the job

• Lead the design, implementation and continuous development of the maternity governance and assurance framework, ensuring clear accountability, escalation, reporting and evidence of improvement across all maternity services.
• Provide senior expert leadership for clinical governance, regulatory compliance, quality assurance, risk management, incident oversight, audit, effectiveness, patient experience, complaints learning, claims and inquest themes and external review preparedness.
• Deputise for the Director of Midwifery as required, including representing maternity services at directorate, divisional, level and external assurance forums.
• Provide authoritative professional advice, constructive challenge and senior decision-making support to the maternity triumvirate, heads of midwifery, matrons, governance leads and multidisciplinary teams on quality, safety, compliance and assurance matters.
• Ensure triangulation of complex intelligence from incidents, complaints, claims, inquests, audit, patient feedback, workforce indicators, training compliance, clinical outcomes, inequality data and external reviews to identify themes, risks and improvement priorities.
• Lead the development of high-quality assurance reports, dashboards, evidence packs and improvement plans for senior internal and external scrutiny, ensuring actions are clear, measurable, owned and delivered within agreed timescales

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The full job description provides an overview of the key tasks and responsibilities of the role and the person specification outlines the qualifications, skills, experience and knowledge required. For both overviews please view the Job Description attachment with the job advert.

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.