Cerian Llewelyn

I am a highly impassioned and motivated midwife and am dedicated to continually improving service provisions to enhance outcomes for service users and staff groups alike.
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I have worked as the Lead Midwife for Clinical Risk and Governance within the Health Board for over three years, though in the past 18 months, due to service needs, I have regularly deputised for the Head of Midwifery to ensure a consistent and high-level service has been maintained in-spite of local challenges. I am passionate that safe and effective care is delivered across the Maternity Service in line with the Welsh Government Quality and Safety Framework. I have developed expert knowledge in Datix investigation reviews, guidelines and policies development. I am confident and competent to lead in multi-professional forums. I have gained extensive skills, knowledge and insight into incident and concern reviews and ensured that service users are included at every level of investigations, prioritising transparency and objectivity to promote trust and assurance. I have expert skills in identifying areas for valuable learning to ensure continual growth and improvement. I have promoted engagement of the multi-disciplinary team to ensure that learning is shared across the directorate, and the wider Health Board to facilitate the ultimate purpose of the role; supporting and developing the implementation of improvements to enhance safety and improve outcomes. I regularly provide assurances at Directorate and Board level to ensure the continuation of a high quality, safe and effective service which centres around the needs and wishes of the service user. I am also confident in my skills and abilities to present nationally and have represented the department in providing assurances to Welsh Assembly Government as part of Integrated Quality, Planning and Delivery Meeting (IQPD) meetings.


The roles I have undertaken have enabled me to lead a collaborative team which has been fundamental in changing the workplace culture to improve patient safety. We were delighted when this work was recognised nationally by both NHS Wales Awards and the National Patient Safety Awards where we were appointed winners in both categories. The awards acknowledged the significant improvements around patient safety - essential for service users and staff alike. An important aspect of the role has been ensuring strategic involvement of families at every level to ensure that their voice and experience remains a focal point. This success was recently recognised in the RCM Midwives Journal where an extensive editorial piece was published in relation to the paradigm shift and subsequent culture change achieved across maternity and neonatal services within Hywel Dda.

I have worked flexibly as part of senior management team across the maternity service to ensure that there is consistent delivery of high level care, having recently graduated as a Florence Nightingale Leadership Scholar I feel confident in my skills to both manage and lead to deliver service outcomes. I have developed a Governance Framework within Maternity and Neonatal Service, the development of this framework has ensured that appropriate action could be taken to identify and address organisational performance issues quickly and effectively to provide a veracity of assurance to the executive team of a high quality, safe service.

Over the course of my career I have shown consistent dedication to ensuring standards of equality, diversity and inclusion are upheld. I have dedicated much work to understanding the association between adverse outcomes and minortisation. Working as a part of a dedicated team we have delivered cultural competency training. Alongside an obstetric colleague I facilitated “Race Matters in Maternity Conference” to ensure that equality, diversity and inclusion remains high on the national agenda. I also facilitated the development an individual Maternity Passport to support the communication needs of service users with a learning disability. I have always championed the diverse needs of both the service users and the staff that I lead and manage to ensure inclusivity and equity. This important work has recently been acknowledged and awarded a joint RCM / CNO award for Wales

Working as a senior leader has enabled me to engage at a national level and appreciate the importance of ensuring that national policies and Governmental agendas are implemented at a local level. I believe passionately leaders need to be able to deal with and manage a range of stakeholders with diverse goals, values and priorities. As a leader I pride myself on understanding others to collaborate and coproduce organisational outcomes, this has been fundamental to the success of improving workplace culture within a diverse maternity unit across a vast geographical area.

Across all services, workforce capacity and resilience are a recurring concern. At each level I have been responsible for managing and leading teams, utilising and upholding my strong belief in compassionate leadership I have contributed to the development and implementation of a recruitment and retention strategy for the midwifery service. This important workstream focused on coproducing a support programme based on the needs and wishes of staff, increasing PDR compliance whist working within the Health Board’s vision and budgetary resourcing and has seen an overall increase in the retention of staff and reduced midwifery vacancies as well as improved staff satisfaction and reduced workplace sickness.

By adopting agile workforce planning, I have worked closely with the Head of Midwifery and Operational Lead Midwives to address periods of peak demand alongside robust workforce planning for ongoing sustainable delivery of services across the entire maternity service. The implementation of a Health Board wide digital dashboard has helped to identify areas of peak demand and therefore supported staffing provisions to be appropriately adopted. Collaboratively, we prioritised the need to manage the service within existing resources and budgetary needs whilst tracking financial performance. We also implemented innovative mechanisms to support training needs with hybrid learning opportunities to minimise the impact on resourcing whilst upholding training requirements, understanding the impact of the challenges associated with the geography and financial position of the Health Board.

I have consistently been involved in clinical audit and understand the importance of audit in providing a systematic mechanism to evaluate and ultimately improve care to women and their babies. I have engaged extensively across the Health Board and have supported the implementation of AMAT to enable digital tracking of audit

In 2021 I was appointed by Health Education Improvement Wales as the All Wales Programme Manager for the implementation of the Standards for Student Supervision and Assessment, working nationally enabled to successfully network. I was able to ensure a consistent and collaborative approach to the implementation of the NMC Future Midwife across all Health Boards in Wales, by understanding the service needs and challenges of each Health Board I was able to develop a programme which was adopted nationally.

I have actively sought opportunities to enable both personal and professional growth and in 2015 during the Ebola crisis I volunteered in Liberia and Sierra Leone to work with local clinicians to develop a programme of maternity education in a sub-Saharan Africa. My role focused on developing and implementing a midwifery education programme and essential skills in the clinical environment following the devastating loss of clinicians during the Ebola pandemic. An incredibly challenging, but humbling experience where the art of learning was shared even in the absence of a mutual language.

In 2017 successfully obtained a post Swansea University as a Midwifery Lecturer, this allowed me to explore my passion for midwifery education and simultaneously balance my commitment to my clinical role. I am confident in my ability to effectively and consistently work as part of a team, and regardless of the team that I am a part of, my focus is on ensuring seamless working . I was able to develop strong working relationships with the university, which I maintain even today.

In 2021 I achieved a distinction in my Master of Arts. I studied at great length leadership styles and now feel ready, along with my experience, to translate this learnt knowledge into a more senior position. In 2019, I was delighted to receive the Swansea University “inspiring teaching award”. Later that year, I received the greatest honour of being awarded “Lecturer of the year”. I was honoured to have my hard work and commitment recognised. I have been awarded Fellowship status to the Higher Education Academy. Working in academia has been excellent experience and allowed me to support seamless working and co-production between the theoretical and clinical environment.

2024 Nursing Times Award - Finalist, Midwife of the Year

2024 RCM Awards - Finalist (Leadership)

2024 Publication in the RCM Midwives Journal

2024 NHS Wales Award (Improving Patient Safety)

2023 Health Services Journal - Winner (Developing a Positive Safety Culture Award)

2023 Health Services Journal - Finalist (Patient Safety Education and Training Award)

2023 - Maternity Neonatal Safety Support Programme "Brightspot"

2019 - Swansea University Lecturer of the Year

2018 - Swansea University - Inspiring Teacher Award

2013 - Publication in the Practising Midwife Journal