Ciara Thorn

Said the following about Denis Kirk:

“Our front-line station teams work 24 hours a day, serving up to half a million customers daily and keeping them and our stations safe. One of the key threats to their safety is the threat of assault.

We are seeing an upward trend in the number of verbal and physical assaults in our stations and there was a need to address this. Colleagues also tell us that this is something they are worried about. There was a trend around interactions with vulnerable people, as we have a large homeless community coming into our stations. We developed an approach to help protect colleagues, including working with outreach teams and training was one component where we saw opportunity.

Feedback from our front-line colleagues told us that there wasn’t clear understanding of the complexities of homelessness and they needed more guidance to support them safely and effectively while engaging with rough sleeping and begging persons. We also understood that whilst some colleagues felt confident in having a conversation with vulnerable people, the majority did not.

We know that Covid has had an impact on mental health in the UK and with passengers returning to work after Covid we saw a continued rise in verbal and physical assaults. So, we wanted to equip our colleagues with the right skills to diffuse and manage conflict, whilst maintaining a great level of service for our returning passengers as we welcome them back to the railway.

Denis created a bespoke one-day training programme that would help to support:

- Reduction in the number of interactions that result in a verbal or physical assault

- An increased feeling of safety and more confidence

- A greater understanding about what it is and means to be homeless.

Our training was developed in-house, by Denis our training manager who has extensive experience, having worked his way up from an entry level position to station manager at London Bridge station. He worked collaboratively with local homeless outreach charity connections from St Martins in the Field to create bespoke elements on homelessness. St Martins have provided us with accreditation for this training.

This training covers the following topics, which when brought together give a unique piece of training tailored to the needs of our people and our customers.

- Interactions with vulnerable people

- Body-worn cameras - the pros and cons

- The current climate – mental health following Covid

- Passengers changing working habits and their feelings returning to our stations

- Giving great service.

This training was also implemented nationally across Network Rail and forms part of our new stations induction training; other industry organisations are also showing interest in the programme.

Feedback from the course:

• “Denis has done a great job and I believe that this should have been done earlier. Looking forward to the future.”

• “The course was brilliant. We discussed and exchanged our views, thoughts, and our experiences.”

• “I would like to commend Denis for all the hard work and effort he has put in. I hope this Academy can continue to grow with its courses and training staff. Great stuff!”

• “I found the course very helpful in knowing figures such as how much people become homeless each year and hearing different people’s views from different stations, I also think it’s a good idea that this will be shortened but introduced to the new starters.”

• “Very good course.”

• “It was an informal two-way discussion and I felt comfortable bringing up my experiences.”

• “Well-paced and presented. Denis encouraged honest feedback and discussion.”

• “In terms of our safety - the course content was great, for me it's well received.”

• “Very well put together and easy to follow.”

We believe that this training is truly unique and has been created to directly target the safety of our staff and customers.

This training combines the critical activities of safety and security with customer service for our front-line colleagues who are working across central London’s busiest rail stations 24/7. They are experiencing a wide variety of situations and interacting with people with different backgrounds and across our society and the communities we serve every day.

Without any available specific training package, Denis decided to address this need ourselves. We wanted to help our teams and develop this bespoke package which addressed the various aspects that can lead to assaults taking place against our station colleagues.

Denis took the opportunity to create something which has been highly successful, well received and now rolled out across our 20 national stations reaching hundreds of front-line colleagues and helping innovation within the rail industry.

Having been implemented nationally across Network Rail, it also now forms part of the contingency training for those covering the current strike action.“