Background
Violence and intimidation against women and girls is one of the UK rail industry's most significant safeguarding priorities. Frontline staff are often the first to notice concerning behaviour or to intervene, but classroom-based training struggles to reproduce the complexity and pressure of a real incident on a station platform or on board a train.
EMBODY, Be The Change was built to close that gap. Developed by XR studio JUICE Immersive, the virtual reality training programme places rail staff inside authentic, trauma-informed scenarios where they can rehearse recognising, responding to and reporting incidents before they meet them in their day-to-day roles.
The deployment
The programme was created through the First of a Kind (FOAK) 2025 innovation competition, funded by the Department for Transport and delivered by Innovate UK under the competition's personal safety theme. It was co-designed with rail operators, safeguarding specialists, immersive learning experts and policing partners.
Pilot evaluation involved frontline rail and safeguarding professionals from Greater Anglia, Northern, TransPennine Express, British Transport Police and the Department for Transport.
How the training works
Learners work through 360-degree VR scenarios shot from a first-person point of view, structured around three stages of safeguarding:
- Recognising behaviours and early warning signs
- Responding safely and appropriately through effective intervention
- Reporting incidents accurately to support survivors and strengthen safeguarding outcomes
Each scenario carries interactive decision points and a structured debrief, so staff can see the consequences of the choices they made and reflect on them in a psychologically safe setting. The design is survivor-centred and trauma-informed throughout, and uses branched narrative decision-making rather than a single linear film.
Evaluation
Pilot evaluation reported strong results across confidence, relevance and readiness measures, with 20 of 25 learning measures showing significant improvement after training. Every participant said they intended to apply the learning in their role and found the scenarios relevant to their work.
Partners and delivery
The project was led by JUICE Immersive in partnership with Maudsley Learning, Oxfordshire Community Rail Partnership and Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse, alongside British Transport Police, Rail North Partnership and Transport for the North.
Following the pilot, the programme is offered to rail organisations on annual subscription packages. It can run on an operator's existing VR hardware or be delivered as a fully managed service including headsets, bespoke scenario development and 'Train the Trainer' support.
