Dear Candidate 

We are delighted that you are considering the role of NED at Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust (BWC). We hope you find the following information helpful and that you will contact our partner at Anderson Quigley, should you have any further questions. 

To be a NED at BWC would mean being at the heart of care for women, children, and young people, where you’ll make an impact from day one that lasts for generations. We are a specialist Trust that combines game-changing discovery with compassionate care.  

We live our values, seeking Ambitious, Brave, and Compassionate people to find their place with us. The work we do is innovative, so we position ourselves as aspirational, but we’re also real. We’re at the forefront of opportunity, and we’re authentic and straight-talking. We’re proud yet humble, progressive, and inclusive, excited, and passionate – and known for our welcoming energy. 

As part of our Board, you will participate in the development of the Trust’s vision, strategies, and objectives, holding the Executive Board members to account for their delivery. You will work with your colleagues on the Board of Directors to establish networks and partnerships to support the delivery of the Trust’s strategy and development of the Trust’s role as a key national lead in the delivery of women’s, children’s, and young people’s health services. 

Situated in Europe’s youngest city, we want to ensure our Board reflects the diversity of our local population. We want to ensure rich debate, diversity of thought and innovative solutions to our challenges. We are therefore eager to encourage individuals from all communities, backgrounds and experiences. Given one of the roles will become Chair of our Audit Committee, we will need recent financial experience and in the other, a digital or technology industry background would be desirable. We are also seeking in at least one of the appointments, strong commercial experience. 

These are exciting opportunities, in an NHS provider Trust with an excellent national and international reputation. We do hope you will consider this role, and we look forward to hearing from you!  

Kind regards 

We are Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust – proud to bring together the expertise of Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Birmingham Women’s Hospital.

Our Trust is the first of its type in the UK, formed in February 2017 to drive forward our commitment to providing the highest quality, world-class care that women, children and families want, and deserve.

Uniting our hospitals means more seamless care; more investment to make greater advances in our specialist treatment and world-leading neo-natal and fetal work. Importantly, it also gives us a greater voice in shaping the future of family-centred care.

Inclusivity Empowers The Communities We Serve

Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Hospital Trust believe in creating a culture where differences are valued. To do that well, we strive to ensure that we recruit from the communities we serve. This enables us to foster an inclusive culture that welcomes, supports, and celebrates the diverse voices of our employees, as well as our patients, families and visitors. We refuse to condone any discrimination based on age, disability, sex, gender identity, marriage/civil partnership, pregnancy/maternity, race, religion, sexual orientation (including but not limited; to biphobia, transphobia, homophobia) or any other basis for treating people unfairly. Health equality is at our core, which is what drives us to work even harder to acknowledge and support those from marginalised groups. We will work together to be a Trust where inclusivity is always our starting point.

Locations

Birmingham Children’s Hospital is in the centre of the city and provides children’s A&E, elective, emergency and outpatient care. As well as our main hospital, our newest estate – Waterfall House – is situated at this site, home to the UK’s first pioneering Rare Diseases Centre for children, and a combined inpatient and outpatient Oncology and Haematology Centre.

Birmingham Women’s Hospital, in Edgbaston, is situated adjacent to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, housing maternity, neonatal, gynaecology, genetics and laboratory services.

Parkview Clinic in Moseley provides child and adolescent inpatient mental health care.

We also have a range of community venues for our Forward Thinking Birmingham services providing community mental health services.

Mission, Vision and Goal

Services

With more than 641,000 visits from patients each year, we are a busy Trust and pride ourselves on the commitment of our 6,000 strong team, which works tirelessly to provide the very best treatment and support to our women, children and families.

We’re passionate about nurturing and developing the skills of our present and future workforce, along with investing in the very best training and education to foster life-long learning.

We have 63 ‘highly specialised’ and ‘specialised’ services that are commissioned nationally by NHS England. Our 12 highly specialised services include liver disease, liver and small bowel transplants, retinoblastoma, craniofacial surgery, Epidermolysis Bullosa and a number of rare diseases. We lead the way in the treatment of major trauma, neonatal and paediatric intensive care, burns, cancer, epilepsy surgery, kidney disease, fetal medicine, genetics services and many others.

BWC has recently announced plans to undertake major construction work to redevelop the estate to provide a better environment and expand existing services, representing a £65 million investment in patient and staff experience. Details of the redevelopment plan can be found here.

We play a key role in leading change and innovation in healthcare regionally and nationally:

• We are leading the ‘children and young people’ and ‘mothers and infants’ workstreams as a key member of the Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care System (ICS).
• We are playing a critical role in the Birmingham and Solihull Maternity and Newborn Partnership – Bump – which will revolutionise services by empowering women to access consistent, world-class and holistic care that is right for them, their baby and their family.
• We are leading the way in bereavement care, building the UK’s first purpose built centre for families that have experienced baby loss – Woodland House. And we’re home to the Tommy’s National Early Miscarriage Centre for research into miscarriage, stillbirth and premature birth – the largest centre in Europe.
• Our Genetics Lab is playing a central role in the West Midlands Genomic Medicine Centre as part of the national 100,000 genome project.
• We are transforming mental health provision through collaborative initiatives such as Forward Thinking Birmingham.
• Our research has led to improvements in timely diagnosis of congenital heart defects through pulse oximetry – an approach now used globally.
• Our research into the use of used real-time diagnostic information, inspired by the world of Formula 1 racing, looks set to save thousands of young cardiac patients’ lives now it is being used in hospitals globally.

There is a range of resources online that will allow you to quickly see some of the fantastic services we provide; for example:

• Our website: https://bwc.nhs.uk
• One Born Every Minute: Series 11 episodes 1 – 10 – available on All 4.
• Forward Thinking Birmingham videos – available on the You Tube Channel.
• Videos of our clinical and service innovations – available on the You Tube Channel.

Staff

Our staff are our greatest source of pride. As a member of the Board you will get to know them and the services they provide, and be amazed at the incredible things they do each day.

Board of Directors

You will be joining a Board of Directors comprising highly regarded individuals and experts in their respective fields in both the public and private sector; from surgery and medicine, research and innovation, policy and leadership to accountancy and audit, organisational change and transformation.

As a team they have achieved service transformation and improvement in the most challenging circumstances, improving Care Quality Commission ratings across the Trust’s services only a short time after two organisational mergers, while maintaining standards of operational and financial performance.

The Board is now very much looking to the future of BWC, with an ambitious strategy to achieve its ambitious world-leading goals focused on technology, innovation and high quality estate with research and education embedded throughout.

Remuneration: £13,000 per annum

Location: Birmingham Women’s Hospital and Birmingham Children’s Hospital; meetings are currently being held online but will develop over time into a mixture of some face-to-face meetings and some held online.

Time commitment: 4 days per month

The following dates are a mixture of public on-line meetings and in-person seminars, monthly meetings, first week of the month (where possible).

09/01/2024
01/02/2024
05/03/2024
09/04/2024
02/05/2024
04/06/2024
02/07/2024
03/09/2024
02/10/2024
05/11/2024
03/12/2024

Whilst BWC is able to consider applicants from outside of the immediate region; consideration will need to be given to your flexibility and ease to travel to Birmingham on a regular basis. 

BWC will provide a bespoke introduction and package of support to new appointees; this would be further enhanced for those with less NED experience.