Ambulance crews change macho image

The London Ambulance Service is launching a recruitment campaign targeting ethnic minorities.

Management and union officials want to reform its white-male image and eradicate racial and sexual prejudice.

The LAS has been given a pounds 60,000 government grant for the project, that will include distribution of 60,000 leaflets listing a freephone inquiry line. People will be encouraged to join recruitment sessions.

Suitable applicants will be taken onto a training course, referred for further assessment or offered a place on a pre-employment training scheme.

Andrew Brown, personnel director, insisted that it did not constitute positive discrimination. 'We are actively encouraging people to apply and helping them with interview techniques. At the end we will only hire people if we are convinced they are capable of becoming paramedics. We do not intend to drop standards.

'Traditionally our personnel have been white, middle-aged males from south London. It has always been a bit macho. The crews should be recruited from the communities which they serve.

The LAS, which employs 3,000 staff, and the health union Unison want 50 per cent of staff by 2005 to be female and 20 per cent from ethnic minorities. In January, 22 per cent of employees and 15 per cent of front-line crews were women. Ethnic minorities accounted for 4 per cent of the latter.

As part of the reforms to improve response rates, which are the worst in the country, the Government allocated an extra pounds 14.8m to train 240 more staff and replace ageing vehicles.

Mr Brown saw this as an opportunity to hire more minorities. Advertisments were placed in Asian journals and women's magazines.

'A third of the applicants were women . . . however, we failed to get a decent number of applicants from ethnic minorities. The majority of applicants were still caucasian males.