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The North East Ambulance Service is partnering with The King’s Trust to offer young people across the region the opportunity to begin their careers in the ambulance service and train to become health advisors taking 999 and 111 calls across the region.
The King’s Trust, formerly known as The Prince’s Trust, is a youth-based charity that helps young people aged 16-30 who are unemployed or facing adversity to build confidence and skills to live, learn and earn. Over the last five years, three in four young people supported by The Kings Trust moved into work, education or training after completing one of their programmes.
“We’re excited to welcome our first ever cohort from The King’s Trust on to a jointly developed ‘Get Started’ programme. We hope the scheme helps young people secure employment with us and ultimately transform their lives.
“Our health advisors are the first point of contact for our service users and therefore play an incredibly important role in the organisation and the patient journey. We value investing in our workforce to help our staff achieve their career goals and provide them with the support and opportunities to develop themselves and their careers, whether this be as part of our support service, up through our emergency operations centre, or training to become part of our crews on the road.”
Nicola Couley, recruitment business partner for the North East Ambulance Service.
The North East Ambulance Service operates three emergency operations centres across the region and employs 322 health advisors. In 2024/25, they answered over 1.4 million 999 and 111 calls from across the region. They also provided essential support to the service’s dispatch teams, ambulance crews, and the wider NHS system by treating over 37,900 patients over the phone.
The “Get Started” programme will begin in May and will cover application support, interview and assessment preparation, including mock interview sessions and the chance to speak to the service’s recruitment and emergency operations centre teams about what a role at NEAS is like. At the end of the programme, candidates will then be given the opportunity to apply for health advisor positions exclusive to members of the King’s Trust.
Nicola concludes: “NEAS has a real commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion and we believe talent is all around us irrespective of people’s backgrounds, but opportunity isn’t always. We want to break down any barriers and we believe with our recruitment expertise and the Kings Trust’s proven ability to inspire and support young people we can open new doors for people and create lasting impact in communities.”
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