VR-CLiCs
Child Local Clinics for Safety in Virtual Environments
This output presents the findings and practical materials developed through VR-CLiCS (Child Local Clinics for Safety in Virtual Environments), a pilot project adapting the REPHRAIN Privacy Clinics model to address safety risks in social virtual reality and online gaming environments.
The project delivered participatory safety clinics with young people (aged 12–17) and adults including parents, carers and educators. Clinics combined educational materials, scenario-based discussions, quizzes exploring perceptions of online harms, and co-design activities where participants developed ideas for future safety tools.
The output includes:
- Findings from the VR-CLiCS clinics are reported within the REPHRAIN Safer Streets Strand 1 report, which documents insights from the Glasgow pilot alongside related community studies.
- A methodological approach describing how Privacy Clinics can be adapted to immersive technologies and youth contexts.
- Examples of workshop materials and activity formats used during the clinics (e.g., storyboards, quizzes, and co-design sheets).
- Early insights and recommendations for improving prevention, safety tools, and reporting mechanisms.
Key insights include the prominence of anti-social behaviour and harassment in immersive online spaces, the mental health impacts of online harms, limited awareness of external reporting mechanisms such as CEOP, and a strong demand for faster, clearer, and more preventative safety tools.
The toolkit and report are intended to support organisations working on online safety, youth engagement, and digital harm prevention, enabling them to run similar clinics and develop locally relevant prevention strategies.