Role summary
Join the leading UK charity dedicated to supporting babies born premature, to lead a new programme of work in Wales. This is an excellent opportunity for a proactive programme lead or project manager to lead engagement with healthcare teams and parents/carers across Wales to improve care for babies across 9 neonatal units, focussing especially on babies who face the biggest challenges.
Every year in Wales, around 2800 babies are born premature or sick and needing care on a neonatal unit – this isn’t what most parents expect for their baby. Many of these babies, and their families, will face inequalities which relate to their ethnicity, or their socio-economic disadvantage.
Bliss is the UK’s leading national charity for babies born premature or sick, and we are looking for someone with the skills for engagement and project management to join team. This is a fantastic opportunity for someone to help lead an exciting new programme of work, to understand the needs of parents and healthcare teams across Wales, to increase reach and impact in the country.
- Location: Based in Wales and able to travel to 9 neonatal units across the country. We expect at least 1-2 visits to each unit in the fixed term of the contract
Salary: £36,850 FTE
Terms: 28 hours per week. Fixed term to end of September 2026
Role details
Bliss has recently been awarded a one-year grant from the Welsh Government to deliver a programme of work to support and drive neonatal service transformation across the country. In line with Bliss new 4-year strategy, this programme will work with neonatal healthcare professionals across the 9 neonatal units in Wales, support families whose babies need this vital care, and include research and policy work to improve care across the country.
The programme lead will coordinate the work of this programme, which will be managed by teams across Bliss, and lead on the engagement of parents and healthcare teams across Wales. During the 12 months of the funding agreement, to the end of September 2026, the programme will:
• Raise awareness of and access to Bliss’ information and support for parents
• Support all neonatal units to progress through Bliss’ Baby Charter standards
• Undertake service-user involvement work to inform the development of a new digital parent support service
• Undertake engagement work with health professionals to inform training and the development of resources to support the delivery of Family Integrated Care (FICare)
• Carry out a policy research project on neonatal inequalities.
The ideal candidate will be able to demonstrate the following skills and experience:
• Proven ability to build effective internal and external relationships with a range of stakeholders
• Strong experience of project management, able to juggle multiple priorities and coordinate with others to deliver activities on time and to budget
• Self-motivated and solutions-focused, able to work on own initiative to get things done
• Demonstrable understanding of how to involve service users in the development, delivery and evaluation of services
• Strong understanding of equity, diversity and inclusion, and of inequalities related to healthcare, and how to tackle these.
Knowledge of Welsh healthcare systems in general, and maternity/neonatal services in particular would be a distinct advantage
For more details please view the job description and person specification attached to this advert.
