Job summary

Are you passionate about improving quality and safety in midwifery? We are looking for an exceptional midwife with a proven track record working within a safety and quality portfolio who can provide clinical oversight and leadership as the divisional governance lead for maternity and neonatal

You will lead on the coordination of serious incidents, complaints, and audit, ensuring learning is embedded into practice and aligned with national priorities including Ockenden, National reports, the NHS Patient Safety Strategy, and Maternity Incentive Scheme and MBRRACE UK. Working closely with multidisciplinary teams and system partners, you will be responsible for oversight of governance frameworks, support assurance processes, and promote a culture of safety and continuous improvement.

We are looking for a highly motivated midwife with existing strong governance experience, excellent analytical skills, and a proven ability to lead a team, influence practice and deliver change at pace.

This multifaceted role demands exceptional leadership, communication, and influencing skills, with the ability to work across multidisciplinary teams and deliver assurance at the highest level. The postholder will champion governance excellence, foster collaboration, and ensure that systems and processes underpin the delivery of safe, effective, and harm-free care.

Main duties of the job

This is a highly visible and influential leadership role that provides strategic and operational governance support across the Division with a focus on Maternity and Neonatal services. The Divisional Governance Lead will act as a key driver for patient safety, quality improvement, and regulatory compliance, ensuring that governance systems are robust, responsive, and aligned with national standards and Trust policy.

The purpose of the role is to provide strategic leadership and oversight of the divisional governance agenda in relation to the Maternity and Neonatal portfolio, ensuring compliance with Trust policies, national standards, and NHS frameworks. Manage the Maternity and Neonatal governance team; drive patient safety, learning, and ensure that improvement actions are undertaken and that assurance of actions being embedded are evident through audit assurance processes; and enable high-quality care through effective incident response, risk management, compliance, and culture.

The postholder will oversee incident profiles and serious incidents, providing escalation and thematic reviews to the Divisional Management Team and ensuring lessons learned are embedded into practice. They will lead divisional learning responses relating to Maternity and Neonatal services under the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF), ensuring investigations are robust and outcomes shared to improve care delivery.

About us

Our mission is to provide excellent care with compassion.

We have three equally important strategic aims - to provide outstanding healthcare to our local communities, to offer a range of high quality specialised services to patients in Lancashire and South Cumbria, and to drive innovation through world-class education, training and research.

We are constantly striving to improve, and working towards becoming an outstanding, high performing organisation.

Our values define who we are and how we behave.

• Caring and compassionate.We treat everyone with dignity and respect,doing everything we can to show we care.
• Recognising individuality.We respect, value and respond to every person'sindividual needs.
• Seeking to involve.We will always involve you in making decisionsabout your care and treatment, and are alwaysopen and honest.
• Team working.We work together as one team, and involvepatients, families, and other services,to provide the best care possible.
• Taking personal responsibility.We each take personal responsibility to give thehighest standards of care and deliver a servicewe can always be proud of.

Job responsibilities

Please see Job description and person specification for details of the role role and responsibilities.

Risk management will form a key part of the role, with responsibility for maintaining and scrutinizing the relevant aspects of the divisional risk register, validating new risks, ensuring controls and assurances are documented, and escalating significant risks to senior leadership. The role also includes ensuring regulatory compliance, acting as the divisional lead for Care Quality Commission (CQC) requirements, maintaining inspection readiness, coordinating responses to enquiries, and monitoring action plans.

The Divisional Governance Lead for Maternity and Neonatal services will provide oversight of audit and clinical effectiveness processes, ensuring NICE guidance responses and audit findings are tracked and reported through governance structures. Safeguarding responsibilities include monitoring incidents, collaborating with the Safeguarding Team, participating in Section 42 reviews, and providing assurance to governance forums.

In addition, the postholder will act as a trusted advisor for workforce investigations and managing allegations, ensuring fair and transparent processes, supporting managers, and contributing to lessons learned reviews. They will also coordinate divisional responses to clinical claims, disseminate learning, and oversee safety alerts to ensure timely review, dissemination, and action tracking.

Finally, the role includes leadership and management of the Maternity and Neonatal governance team, encompassing recruitment, on boarding, appraisals, training compliance, and performance management, while fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement

Qualifications
Essential

• Appropriate NMC registration
• Degree in Midwifery
• Evidence of post registration qualification
• Evidence of management/leadership qualification

Desirable

• Educated to/working towards master's degree level and display master's level thinking and decision making
• PMA qualification
• Qualification relating to governance

Knowledge & Experience
Essential

• An in-depth understanding of all aspects of evidence-based midwifery practice.
• Ability to demonstrate knowledge of governance processes within maternity services
• Able to demonstrate significant personal involvement in change management
• An understanding of confidentiality issues
• Relevant recent experience encompassing a wide range of midwifery experience.
• Demonstrable experience of developing and implementing new systems
• Experience of staff management, support, and supervision
• Able to demonstrate an understanding of the national vision for maternity services and the wider health service
• Able to demonstrate commitment to continuous improvement
• Experience of conflict management
• Ability to design and develop support programmes and engagement plans, evaluation, and monitoring of plans
• Evidence of guideline development, research, and audit experience
• Experience and knowledge of the NHSR processes
• Experience and knowledge of PMRT and HSIB

Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Certificate of Sponsorship
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Apply through our website).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Apply through our website).

UK Registration
Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.