Jocelyn is Director of Midwifery at the Office of the Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer. She is an expert midwife and health practitioner with 30 years’ experience, including the last six in leading policy and strategy of maternity services, midwifery workforce, redesign of maternity care at the state level, and influencing policies and decision-making at national and international levels.
Jocelyn has mentored students and early career midwives as a clinician, manager and educator over her career, with many of these midwives having gone into leadership positions in the public and private sector, private midwifery practice, and completing higher education degrees.
Jocelyn established the Gold Coast Hospital Birth Centre in 2006, which provided an opportunity to advocate in EB6 for midwives in continuity models to have annualised salaries for the first time in Queensland. This model has since flourished across the state.
In 2014, Jocelyn was part of the Logan Together Backbone Team and co-led the maternity initiative, which culminated in the development of community maternity hubs. Logan has subsequently benefited from placing midwives in community through continuity of midwifery care models.
As Director of Midwifery in the OCNMO, Jocelyn has a unique role to ensure midwives are recognised for their expertise through policy, education and practice, and to support midwives to work to their full scope of practice.
Jocelyn recently developed the now published document Queensland Normal Birth Strategy, which focuses on the best use of a skilled midwifery workforce to deliver high quality maternity care.
She has also showcased the work of midwives across the state and provided opportunity for state-wide learning and networking through forums such as the Normal Birth Symposium and The Midwives Hub.
"Midwives can and midwives do make all the difference to lifelong outcomes for families when they work to their full scope and provide evidence-based, relationship-based care. Good care can not occur without kindness and kindness cannot occur without connection. Midwives are with women and their families at times that are foundational to their and their children’s futures and it is a privilege and a responsibility that we morally and ethically cannot squander."