Management structure

Our senior management team provide strategic and operational leadership for the women’s health division. They ensure we are delivering high quality and responsive services and that patient care and experience remains central to what we do.

• Wendy Clarke, Interim Assistant Director
• Dr Jennifer McKenna, Consultant Midwife

  I was delighted to take up the post of Consultant Midwife for the Southern HSCT in June 2022. The role of the Consultant Midwife is to promote expert clinical practice through education and training, while demonstrating professional leadership and consultancy through practice and service development, research and evaluation (DoH, 2017). I am passionate about promoting holistic, individualised, woman-centred midwifery care for all women, throughout their childbearing journey. All women should have care and support from a midwife.

  My goals include establishing a Birth Choices Clinic, promoting our fantastic Midwife-Led Units and Birth at Home service, developing our Complementary Therapies service, and supporting the Continuity of Midwifery Carer model. I’m also working to put midwifery care at the heart of the perinatal mental health, perinatal epilepsy, and perinatal diabetes services. Above all, I want to improve maternity care for all women in the Southern HSCT by working with midwives, obstetricians, other healthcare professionals, and women and their families.

• Amy Eakin, Lead Midwife for Daisy Hill

  

  I am feeling very privileged to be in the role of Lead Midwife for Daisy Hill.  My role is to manage and support the team delivering maternity care within the antenatal, intranatal an postnatal clinics and wards.

  I am passionate about delivering the best care possible to our mothers and babies, and am very proud of the staff within my teams who deliver this on a daily basis.  My goal is support and drive a model of care which keeps our mothers and babies at the centre, and am very grateful to be in a position to lead and guide this.

  “Happiness consists of giving, and in helping others”.

• Mary Dawson, Lead Midwife Craigavon Area Hospital
• Paula Boyle, Interim Head of Midwifery and Gynaecology

  I am currently in post from February 2019.  As the Lead Midwife I manage, lead and support 6 community teams within 3 localities across the SHSCT, Armagh/Dungannon, Brownlow/Banbridge, Newry and Mourne alongside the Birth at Home team who cover the whole Trust.

  My role is to promote and ensure safe, effective, evidenced based, person centred care through good leadership and support to both the midwives and the woman and families that use our service.  Having worked as a community midwife for many years it is my passion that care is delivered in the right place, at the right time by the right person.  Birth at Home and service user involvement are other particular areas of interest and involvement.

• Maria Garvey, Lead Midwife – Continuity of Midwifery Carer (CoMC)

  

  I have been a Midwife for many years working through all areas of Maternity and then as a Delivery Suite Sister in Craigavon Area Hospital. I moved out into Community Midwifery initially to Brownlow and then to Armagh and Dungannon. I became the Team Leader for Armagh and Dungannon in 2016 and was there until I took up my current role as Lead Midwife for Continuity of Midwifery Carer. (CoMC)

  I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to lead on the Regional design and implementation stage of introducing CoMC on behalf of the Trust.

  I am very passionate about CoMC as it will be a way of working within Maternity Services that will provide integrated, appropriate and seamless care for all women through their journey from pregnancy and birth to the early parenting period.

  While all pregnant women need a midwife, many women will also need an obstetrician.  Women may also need to see a range of other specialists including doctors, mental health professionals, allied health professionals or specialist midwives and nurses, depending on their particular needs. All of this will be delivered within the new model which I am delighted about the inclusiveness for all women.

   

• Brid France, Sister, Antenatal and Postnatal Ward, Craigavon Area Hospital

  I was appointed as Ward Manager for the Antenatal and Postnatal ward in Craigavon Hospital in June 2021. I am very lucky to lead an excellent team of midwives and maternity support workers who are passionate about delivering an excellent standard of care to the mothers and babies within our service. Our team was voted Team of the Year in 2021 at the Queens University Belfast training awards and we were also nominated in this category again in 2022 and 2023.

  My role as Ward Manager requires me act as a leader, advisor and role model, ensuring appropriate standards of assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation of programmes of care are delivered to patients within the Antenatal and Postnatal in-patient clinical setting. I also implement and monitor quality assurance initiatives which provide an assurance that the care being delivered on the ward is safe and patient centred.

• Emma Creagh, Ward Manager, Daisy Hill Hospital
  
• Gemma Winter, Antenatal Education Coordinator Midwife

  My name is Gemma Winter and I have worked in the SHSCT for 20 years and I have worked in all areas of maternity services. My current role is the antenatal education co-ordinator Midwife. I am responsible for organising all antenatal parenting programmes for expectant couples.

  I am passionate about supporting, empowering and informing women about pregnancy, labour and birth. Please do not be afraid to get in touch with me if you have any queries in relation to antenatal education classes.

• Michelle O'Hagan, Infant Feeding Lead Midwife
• Donna King, Staff Development Midwife
  
• Katrina McCullough, Clinical Skills Midwife
  
• Donna McLoughlin, Fetal Monitoring Midwife

  I am responsible for training and education in relation to CTG interpretation as well as intermittent auscultation for low risk pregnancies.
• Maria McEnery, Substance Misuse and Social Complexities Midwife

  I am delighted to have been recently appointed in my new position of Substance Misuse and Social Complexities Midwife at Southern Health and Social Care Trust.

  My role is to ensure identification and management of pregnant women with current or historical substance misuse or those women leading socially complex lives.  I will develop and maintain appropriate pathways for a small caseload of women.  I will liaise with Child Care Services in respect of any perceived issues relating to pregnant women or their children’s welfare whilst using local strategies and resources. This will happen in conjunction with Obstetric, Midwifery and Addiction Services, alongside other External Agencies and Voluntary Organisations.

  I am passionate in supporting co-ordinated care, promoting therapeutic individualised care plans to guarantee high quality effective safeguarding processes are in place.  Thereby ensuring excellent care and compassion is offered to pregnant women and their families at all levels by using evidence based practice to offer appropriate interventions.

• Leanne Armstrong, Perinatal Mental Health Midwife

  

• Julie McKenna and Ita McCaughey, Community Midwives

  

• Katherine Martin, Midwifery Practice Education Facilitator

  Hi – my name is Katherine Martin and I am the Practice Education Facilitator for Midwifery in the SHSCT.  The main focus of my role is to ensure that our Trust is meeting the clinical aspect of the NMC Future Nurse, Future Midwife education standards (NMC, 2018) – in other words, students are learning what they need to learn in practice.  There is a useful document on the NMC website that gives you, as a service user, some great information about what these standards mean to you.  You can access it by using this link: my-future-my-midwife-leaflet.pdf (nmc.org.uk)

   

• Donna and Shivaun, Bereavement Midwives

  We feel very privileged to be in this role as Bereavement Support Midwives, helping and supporting families through the heartache and tragedy of pregnancy/ baby loss. We have both worked for SHSCT for many years as midwives in various clinical settings. We came into post in February 2019 and one of our many roles is to help ensure women and their partners receive high quality, individualised and excellent bereavement care following a miscarriage (from 11 weeks), stillbirth or neonatal death.

• Kate Maxwell Antenatal screening midwife

  HI- my name is Kate Maxwell, I have been qualified as a midwife for 14 years.  Prior to that my experience was as a gynae nurse for 5 years.

  My current role is as an Antenatal Screening Coordinator within the Southern Trust.  I have the responsibility for coordinating the infectious disease screening programme within our Trust.  This includes the management of the blood results for every woman whom has consented for screening for HIV, Hepatitis B, Syphilis and Rubella in pregnancy.  These tests look for possible health problems that could affect your health and the health of your baby.  There is a useful leaflet explaining the blood tests that are offered at your first antenatal visit which you as a service user can access in different languages via www.pha.site/antenatal-blood-tests

  Having these blood tests will help you make decisions about your care, both before and after birth, to help protect the health of your baby.  If there is a positive infection you may need to go on treatment to reduce the risk of mother to child transmission or your baby may need some treatment at birth.

  As a midwife I am passionate and feel privileged to work within the Southern Health and Social care midwifery and obstetric teams to deliver a high standard of individualised and evidence based maternity care for women and their families in our locality.