Specialist Advisor – Doctor Consultant – Neonatology

Job summary

Specialist Advisor – Doctor Consultant – Neonatology

Location: National
Daily rate: £300 (£268 day rate + £32/day holiday pay)
Ad-Hoc: As and when required
Closing Date: Friday 20th March 2026 at 11.59pm

Are you committed to helping us regulate health and social care within England?

The CQC are looking for senior clinicians with experience of clinical management/governance process to work with us as Specialty Advisor support our inspectors in their work through your informed insight, knowledge and experience of working within maternity services.

We make sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, equitable, high-quality care and encourage services to improve.

We are looking for people who are caring, demonstrate integrity, aspire to excellence, committed to equitable and inclusive services and care and work well as part of a team to join with us and share in this sense of achievement.

If you would like to help us make a positive impact to health and social care within England and deliver a service of excellence to the public then read on.

Why this could be a great role for you…
You will have an opportunity to contribute to ensuring that neonatal services and the care provided to babies and families are safe, compassionate and effective and are led by clinicians with the required skills, approach, infrastructure and outcomes.

You will gain valuable insight into how neonatal services are assessed and be exposed to varying degrees of and examples of best practice and approaches to improve areas for development that might provide you with useful insights as an experienced clinician and for your own service.

You will also support our inspectors in their work through your informed insight, knowledge and experience.

CQC has a strategic commitment to tackling inequalities. You will be supported in your work through our National Professional Advisor for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Sola Afuape MBE as well as through the Advisory and Complimentary Workforce. The Workforce Equality Risk and Oversight Group also provides co-ordination and development of our approach to workforce EDI in our regulation.

Job description

What you will bring…
Expertise as a Neonatal Consultant and experience and understanding of what is necessary to ensure safe care is paramount to ensure that babies and families receive high quality care in the right place at the right time, and delivered by staff equipped to provide safe, dignified and compassionate care. This includes the opportunities, challenges, statutory requirements and insight from experiences of both staff and people who use services and what is needed to ensure safe, good quality equitable care.

Because you will be operating as a consultant, you will contribute to inspection teams inspiring confidence in provider organisations that the inspection team have the required level of seniority and expertise to undertake effective assessments of equity, equality, diversity and inclusion within our assessment framework.

Finally, most importantly you will bring an understanding of the diversity of lived experiences of both staff, people who use services and their families that should inform our understanding of the culture in which services and care are provided. This includes demonstrated awareness and understanding of intersectionality of oppressions.

For an informal discussion or further information about this role, please contact Victoria Head via email at Victoria.Head@cqc.org.uk

Please note this role is subject to a satisfactory DBS check.

Being a Specialist Advisor
This role can be undertaken as either a Casual Worker, paid directly to a personal bank account by the CQC for attending in your own time (non-working days, annual leave) or as a seconded position if your service is registered with the CQC and agrees to the secondment. Seconded SpAs' organisations agree in principle that their employees can attend CQC inspections and the seconded SpA seeks their line manager's permission to take leave to attend individual inspections, which can last from one to three days. The seconded SpA's organisation then invoices the CQC for the time the SpA spent away from their substantive role.

You will be offered opportunities to support inspection with 6 weeks’ notice whenever possible, however, you will also be contacted for more short notice support on occasions. You are under no obligation to accept an inspection should it be offered and it not be convenient for you. We are not able to guarantee you a set number of inspection opportunities in a one year period. You may be offered one a month or one in the whole year depending on the focus of the inspection programme.

If appointed, as a Specialist Advisor you will be expected to commit to at least 2 inspections per year.

If successful at interview we aim to conclude your pre-engagement checks within a 6-8 week window, please complete all forms and take actions to assist the team in achieving this. You will be provided with a dedicated onboarding peer who will support you in completing pre-engagement checks and will be on hand to answer any questions you have.

You will be required to have a current DBS certificate under 3 years old and we require references going back three years. If you've been with the same employer for three years’ then we'll only require one reference.

Person specification

Eligibility to work
If you are successful at interview, CQC will need to verify your right to work in the UK using digital identity verification. Details of how to complete the right to work check will be provided as part of the conditional offer of employment. If we are unable to verify your right to work digitally, we are required to complete this face to face at one of our CQC Offices. Please be aware that we are unable to progress any offer of employment until right to work in the UK is confirmed.

We will require all successful applicants to be active in Professional Practice.

To access the full Job Description, please visit the job posting on our careers page.

Benefits

The Benefits
We offer a wide range of benefits, including:

• Training and development opportunities.
• Wellbeing initiatives, such as gym discounts and meditation.
• Discount schemes (including eligibility for a Blue Light card, at a cost of £4.99 and valid for 2 years), reward vouchers, car leasing and more!

Please see our benefits page for the full list.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

Individual Adjustments…
We are committed to being open and transparent around our processes and we endeavour to offer every candidate the opportunity to perform at their best throughout the recruitment process. We seek to support candidates to identify potential challenges and work with them to identify and facilitate individual adjustments as appropriate. Should you require assistance and/or would like to request an adjustment at any stage of the recruitment process, please contact a member of the team via email: temprecruitment@cqc.org.uk.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

Please note this Post is NOT regulated by the Civil Service Commission.The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : Victoria Head
• Email : Victoria.Head@cqc.org.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : temprecruitment@cqc.org.uk