This February we are shining a spotlight on the Cultural Ambassador Programme at the East of England Ambulance Service (EEAST).
Introducing EEAST’s Cultural Ambassador programme
The Cultural Ambassador programme is made of staff from Black Minority backgrounds who have volunteered to be trained as Cultural Ambassadors.
In November 2020 they received specific training to enable them to sit as part of investigation teams or as members of the decision-making panels for grievances and disciplinary hearings, where a minority ethnic member of staff is involved. Cultural Ambassadors will also be required to sit as lay members on all recruitment interview panels for roles of band 6 and above.
The aim of the Cultural Ambassador Programme is to:
- Ensure fairness in the manner in which minority ethnic members of staff are treated during the formal process of the investigation, grievance or disciplinary.
- Reduce the number of minority ethnic staff entering formal processes.
- Improve the experience of minority ethnic staff in formal and informal processes.
- Support the addressing of issues identified by the Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) and Workforce Disability Equality Standard) WDES reports.
- Reduce the severity of the sanctions awarded to ethnic minority staff during formal processes.
- Develop opportunities for ethnic minority staff and participate in informal and formal processes.
The benefits of the programme are:
- Trust built with ethnic minority colleagues.
- Issues of a cultural nature will be identified and challenged during the formal process.
- Any acts of cultural bias will be identified and challenged during the formal process.
- Recruit and retain more ethnic minority staff.
- Enhance the reputation of the Trust.
The Trust currently have 17 active Cultural Ambassadors, whom you can find out more about in the above video.
Many thanks to Navrita Atwal and Ashleigh Rickards at EEAST for providing the content around this initiative.
We’ll continue to post our Spotlight updates each month in our website’s News section and via Twitter at @AACE_Org.
You can find more information about our anti-racism promises, along with messages from all of our Ambulance Trust CEOs on our Stamping Out Racism page.
