SCBU Ward Manager
At a glance
- Band
- Band 7
- Contract
- Permanent
- Pattern
- Full-time
- Hours / week
- 37.5
- Posted
- 03/09/2026
- Closes
- 17/09/2026
Sponsorship verdict
Candidates needing sponsorship are encouraged to apply.
HiveMind found a sponsorship-friendly statement in the source advert welcoming applicants who require a visa. Always confirm on the source before applying.
“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.”Quoted verbatim from the source advert
Role summary
This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced neonatal nurse to become the Ward Manager for the Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) at Darlington Memorial Hospital. The role involves providing leadership and management to the nursing team, ensuring safe, effective, and family-focused care for infants needing specialist support. The successful candidate will manage the nursing workforce, supervise team development, and maintain high clinical standards. They will also play a lead role in governance, quality improvement, audit, and performance monitoring within the SCBU.
Key responsibilities
- Provide professional and clinical leadership to the nursing team, ensuring high-quality patient care.
- Manage the nursing workforce, including supervision, development, and allocation of resources.
- Ensure high clinical standards are maintained and coordinate the provision of nursing services.
- Lead on governance, quality improvement, audit, and performance monitoring within the SCBU.
- Manage budget resources effectively and participate in policy development and evaluation.
- Promote a culture of continuous learning, patient safety, and effective engagement with service users and families.
Essential criteria
- Full UK driving licence and ability to travel independently across locations to fulfil the requirements of the post
- Ability to work hours flexibly when service needs require, and across site when necessary to support the SCBU team
- Extensive clinical neonatal nursing experience
- Experience of managing a clinical ward.
- Demonstrate professional managerial development
- Able to communicate effectively (written, verbal and non-verbal communication) with patients/relatives and carers and all members of the multi-disciplinary team.
- Able to develop effective and appropriate relationships to develop partnerships with people to promote shared decision making in order to support individuals, their families
- NMC Registered Nurse (Child or Adult)
- Valid UK NMC PIN
- Nursing Degree leading to UK NMC registration to part 1 of the UK NMC register (Children or Adult Nursing)
- Evidence of continuing professional development and specialist training including the neonatal nursing Qualification in Speciality (QIS)
- Supervisor / Assessor for Pre-registration learners or equivalent teaching qualification
- Substantial post registration demonstrable experience.
- Evidence of recognised teaching/assessors qualification
- Understands and acts in line with UK NMC professional standards for practice.
- meets the requirements for UK NMC professional revalidation
- Insight into how to evaluate own strengths and development needs, seeking advice where appropriate.
- Lead and participate in reflective practice and clinical supervision.
- Good leadership and team working skills including individual appraisals and team development.
- Service development and quality improvement skills evidenced in developing guidelines, SOPS and leading governance processes within service to demonstrate ongoing service development
- Ability to seek advice, challenge and escalate as appropriate in line with relevant policy and process.
- Provides leadership in the delivery of care for people in their care and act in best interests of people, putting them first and providing care that is person-centred, safe and compassionate.
- Safely lead and manage the nursing care, demonstrating appropriate prioritization, delegation and assignment of care to others involved in patient care
- Able to organise and prioritise own workload
- Able to develop and share assessment, planning, decision making and goal setting when working with people, their families
- Ability to deal with non- routine and unpredictable nature of workload and work with high levels of concentration.
- Competent IT Skills
- Be able to work flexibly within the service needs
Desirable criteria
- Contribution to:
- Governance,
- NNAP,
- Quality improvement,
- Maternity incentive scheme agendas
- Evidence of Masters level post registration education
- Develop the role of the Nurse in context of the nursing and interdisciplinary team and the organisation, and how the role may contribute to service development.
- Demonstrate appreciation and understanding of clinical budgeting and financial management
- Demonstrate appreciation of the perinatal context of neonatal care and the monitoring and scrutiny that drives neonatal quality improvement
Useful to know
Agenda for Change 2024/25 pays Band 7 at £46,148 – £52,809 a year, across England.
This advert: £49,387 – £56,515 — outside the standard scale; check for HCAS/London weighting.
Posted 2d ago · Closes in 13d
Plenty of time to prepare a strong application.
Full advert · preview
Job summary
CDDFT have an exciting
opportunity for an experienced neonatal nurse to join our team as ward manager
for the Special Care Baby Unit at Darlington Memorial Hospital.
The role is full time at 37.5
hours per week
The successful candidate will
work collaboratively within the SCBUs and across perinatal services in CDDFT to
provide leadership and management of the nursing team to ensure safe, effective
and family focused care of infants requiring specialist support.
Main duties of the job
The successful candidate will
work collaboratively within the SCBUs in CDDFT and be based and primarily
responsible for the unit at Darlington Memorial Hospital.
They will manage the nursing
workforce within the SCBU and supervise and develop the team. They will be responsible for coordinating the
provision of nursing services and ensure high clinical standards are
maintained.
They will role model
compassionate and inclusive leadership and drive a culture of development and
engagement to enable the team to deliver quality care whilst maximising the
professional development of every member of the workforce.
They will play a lead
role in the governance of the SCBU, and support staff in quality improvement,
audit and monitoring of performance.
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