Corporate Issue

North East Ambulance Service has achieved Disability Confident ‘Leader’ status

The North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) has achieved Disability Confident Leader status.

The recognition was achieved to reflect the work the Trust has carried out when recruiting potential members of staff with a disability and supporting them once employed.

Initiatives to encourage and support disabled people at NEAS include:
  • Actively looking to attract and recruit disabled people
  • Providing an inclusive and accessible recruitment process, including help with job applications
  • Guaranteeing an interview to disabled people who meet the minimum criteria for the job
  • Flexibility in assessment for disabled job applicants, ensuring they have the best opportunity to demonstrate that they can do the job
  • Pro-actively making reasonable adjustments to meet peoples’ specific needs, including flexible working, workplace assessments, adapted equipment and various aids and adaptations.

 NEAS Chief Executive Helen Ray said, “We want NEAS to be a great place to work with a highly skilled, healthy, engaged and motivated workforce that deliver excellent patient care. Being accredited as a Disability Confident Leader is a fantastic achievement and we will champion the status to encourage more employers to do the same.

“Over the last year, almost 300,000 people in the UK with disabilities entered into work and these people make up a significant proportion of potential talent in our region. As an employer, we must ensure we do not miss the opportunity to strengthen our workforce.

“By supporting people with disabilities into work we can break down the barriers, which for too long, have held people back and this means we can make sure everyone has the equal opportunity to succeed in life.”

The Disability Confident scheme has been running since November 2016 and supports the Government’s commitment to help one million more disabled people into work, within the next 10 years.

The assessment for NEAS was undertaken by Virgin Money and the Department for Work and Pensions. Part of the aim of the Disability Confident Leader scheme is for employers, such as Virgin Money, who have achieved the status to assess and support other organisations.


Notes to editors

Notes for editors

About North East Ambulance Service

North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (NEAS) covers 3,200 square miles across the North East region. It employs more than 2,600 staff and serves a population of 2.7 million people by handling all NHS111 and 999 calls for the region, operating patient transport and ambulance response services, delivering training for communities and commercial audiences and providing medical support cover at events.

In 2017/18 the service answered over 1.4 million emergency 999 and NHS 111 calls, responded to 280,00 incidents that resulted in a patient being taken to hospital, treated and discharged 27,000 patients with telephone advice and treated and discharged over 100,000 patients at home. In the same year, clinical crews responded to 126,746 of our highest priority patients within the national targets and scheduled care crews completed almost 580,000 patient transport journeys.