Presentation by Dr Kate Walker-Springett, Dr Catherine Butler and Prof. Neil Adger entitled ‘Community Resilience, well-being and emotional support’. Given at the Flood and Coast Conference, Telford, 2016
2. Overview
Impacts of flood events on well-being
Role of institutional support measures
Building resilient communities
Photo: Matilda Temperley
3. Background
Flooding is the most likely climate change impact
the UK will face
Flood events are deeply traumatic for those that
experience them.
Limited focus on community/relational aspect of
resilience and the links with wellbeing
Photo: Matilda Temperley
5. Photo: Matilda Temperley
In-depth longitudinal research – Somerset case
study
(n = 109), August 2014 - May 2015
Telephone Survey – Somerset Levels and Moors,
Somerset and Boston, Lincolnshire
(n = 1000, July 2015)
Methods
Flooding and well-being:
Kate Walker-Springett:
k.walker-springett@exeter.ac.uk
6. Well-Being Impacts
Wellbeing defined as “judging life positively and feeling good”.
Four time points:
• Now (all participants)
• Before the floods
• During the floods, and
• 12 months post flood
Participants/community
affected by 2013/14 winter
floods
Scale: 1 (low) – 10 (high)
7. Well-beingScale
5
6
7
8
9
10
Time Period
now 12 months
post-flood
during
flood
prior to
flood event
F(1,493.095) = 33.755, p<0.001
F(1,528.687) = 9.652, p<0.001
Flood Affected
Not Flood Affected
8. Well-Being Impacts - Temporality
“When the floods were actually happening, it was very surreal,
it was like you were watching it …the amount of times I went to
look at it, you're noticing things, “oh well it got to there last
time, now it’s here” and you're just … it was really, I don't think
people could understand, it was so stressful, at one point I said
I’d have been better off if I’d have been flooded because I’d
have just abandoned it and gone and then you just deal with
what’s happened but the not knowing, “is it coming?”, “is it
coming?”, you're on edge all the time.” P6
9. Well-Being Impacts - Temporality
“Interestingly, there’s no doubt that I think once you flood, you
flood and you deal with it but the worst part is when you dry
out and the builders come in, it’s so stressful.” P23
“I don't think anything emotional or anything is any different
really, still really concerned about you know, the drop in house
prices and that sort of thing, it’s a real worry, not just for me
but for everybody.” P6
10. Institutional Responses &
Temporality
Whittle et al (2010)
M We’ve just had our kitchen that was
put in ripped out because I’d been
round and done the measurements
myself.
F It’s been poorly installed by the
builders. So not only are we being
reconstructed, we’re being
deconstructed and reconstructed
again. P13a & b
12. Institutional Responses &
Temporality
“I was looking forward at my one year, three years and five
years and it’s full of things like my husband retiring and me
thinking about retiring and going on that world cruise – we’re
not going on a world cruise – but doing the garden or taking up
hobbies and all that kind of thing and I can see forward and the
flooding just wasn’t in there.” P20
13. Institutional Responses &
Temporality
“It’s certainly helped [the dry winter of 2014/5] and the fact
that they’ve done the work has helped… I suppose you
have to accept where you are and I don't know, we’ll see
how we go.” Interview Two, Participant 16a
14. 85% of respondents said that they
agreed with the statement “The
local community provided support
that was not available from the
authorities”
84% of respondents said that they
agreed with the statement “the
community spirit made it easier to
cope with the flooding
15. Well being Impacts – Social Capital
“It was like some awful nightmare and then with wonderful
breaks of comedy, when our friends from up the road came up
in their canoe, opened the doors, and they canoed straight in
here and jus sort of tied up and sloshed out and we sat with
our legs up like this and had a lovely lunch again and then it was
back to work again.” P23
16. Institutional Responses &
Social Capital
“The internal walls are just plasterboard so there’s no
soundproofing, so if anybody is in the toilet, everybody else in
the house can hear them, it’s so horrible, I can’t tell you. It just
is vile compared to my own home, it’s just horrible. Really
horrible.” P20
Survey Results show those evacuated had lower well-being
scores than those who remained at home, during the floods
and 12 months afterwards.
17. Institutional Responses &
Social Capital
“For some people, it was a very emotional experience at the
time, we were involved a lot with the Moorland and Fordgate
Keep In Touch group, help setting it up, organising it, contacting
people, giving support . . and supporting quite a few of the
older people, a couple who went into a residential home, quite
isolated, which was not a particularly good experience for
them.” P13
18. Conclusions
• Resilience includes an important social
dimension
• Linkages between well-being and community
resilience.
• Institutional responses can positively or
negatively impact resilience
Hi, I’m Kate Walker-Springett, and my talk is going to focus on the implication of flood events on community resilience, wellbeing and emotional support, and really why we should be considering these when we think about emergency response, recovery and future planning tor regions at risk from flooding
Flooding is the most likely climate change impact the UK will face, and Flood events are deeply traumatic for those that experience them. And this is not just during the flood, when your home is flooded or you can’t get to work, but it continues long after the flood water recede, and affects how safe you feel in your own home and how anxious you feel when it rains heavily. And yet there limited focus on community/relational aspects of resilience and the links with wellbeing.
So, for the Floods project we have focused on Somerset, which for those of you who don’t know is a county in SW England, shown in red on the map on the left here. The winter of 2013/14 saw high levels rainfall across the UK, but we are using Somerset as a case study within a national context. – where there was prolonged flooding spanning the months December 2013 – March 2014 with some people having water in their homes for up to four weeks or more – an estimated 289 homes were flooded as well as large areas of agricultural land, infrastructure (roads, train network), and other businesses.
The image on the RHS shows the extend of the flooded areas in Somerset.
We conducted semi-structured interviews with flood affected publics and we sampled across different badly affected villages and homes within Somerset Levels and Moors with focus on covering different forms of experience, as well as demographics and social characteristics) We also interviewed flood professionals, although today I am going to focus mainly on the public cohort.
We also conducted a telephone survey across two regions, to see if the attitudes and perceptions we had found in the interviews were salient across wider populations that had experienced flooding.
So, in the survey we set out to have a self reported measure of wellbeing at four time points, all participants were asked for an assessment of their wellbeing on the day of the survey, using a one to ten scale.
Then for all those participants who had stated in an earlier question that either they or their community had been affected by the 2013/14 winter flooding, they were asked to rate their wellbeing on the same scale at three further time point, before the flooding, during the flooding and 12 months post flooding.
This graph shows the result from those questions, with the mean wellbeing scores at each time point.
the blue dots are respondents who were themselves affected by the flooding, and that can be any impact from water in the home through to stress and anxiety and difficulties getting to work, and the green dots are those that were not affected but their community was,
Consistent with previous research we can see that wellbeing was particularly detrimentally effected at the time of flood and 12 months afterwards, and that is for both flood affected and unaffected respondents. Red circles indicate those result which were significantly different between the two groups of respondents, which again is at two time points, during the flood and 12 months post floods.
At both time points those who were affected by the flood had lower wellbeing than those not affected.
So, like I have said previously, during the 2013/14 floods, it was homes as well as land that were flooded and this had severe and long lasting impacts on peoples mental health and well-being.
The quote here typifies the impacts of the long term stress, of watching and waiting to see if the flood waters would enter your home. And I think its important to reiterate here that this flood event last over 3 months in some parts of Somerset, which an incredibly long time to be anxious about whether flood waters will enter your home.
The second quote is form a participant who was evacuated and gives a flavor of the impacts of having to leave your home, without many of your belongings and live in alternative accommodation. It is important to reflect here that whilst the flood waters receded, many people were out of their homes for up to year and in fact there were still several residents that were not back in their homes where we did the second round of interview across Easter of this year.
And of course there is not just the immediate stress and anxiety of the period during which there is water in the house, there are also secondary stressors, such as the stress of dealing with insurance claims and builders, and even longer term, the implication of raised insurance premiums or being refused insurance, and the drop in house prices which effectively means that you cannot sell and leave the area even if you wanted to.
The non-linear recovery trajectory for people affected by flooding over the longer term led some researchers to describe the recovery from flooding as a game of snakes and ladders, with ups and downs as people progress through their recovery journey. The quote here from our research shows this, as participants speak of their house being reconstructed, and then deconstructed as they discovered issue with the newly fitted kitchen as their old kitchen had been damaged by flood waters.
Resilience building activities need to recognize this, that after the flood waters recede there is still much work to be done before residents feel at home in their houses.
In Somerset, several mechanisms were employed to facilitate residents longer term wellbeing recovery. A well being worker has been employed through the Somerset Community Foundation for 12 months (2015 – 2016) to help build emotional resilience in flooded communities and to work 121 with flooded residents. Somerset County Council with the district councils and PHE produced leaflets around wellbeing and mental health, for example there was a Mindful Contractor leaflet which gives advice for contractors working with clients in disaster situations, focusing on greater understanding and being sensitive to clients situations.
This quote is from a participant who took part in a nuero-linguisitc programming course held in a particularly badly affected village sin Somerset. It is called the WARRIOR PROGRAMME and it was originally designed to help combat PTSD in soldiers returning form conflict zones. The course was funded the Legal and General the insurance company, as part of their social responsibility arm, and in the quote our participant speaks about how the course enabled her to see a future that is not dominated by the flood or by the prospect of future floods.
So, it is these EXISTING AND WIDER SERVICE PROVISIONs that are IMPORTANT IN FLOOD RECOVERY AND RESPONSE AS WELL AS ADDITIONAL tailored SUPPORT services.
This quote highlights how the physical works on flood relief undertaken in the area have contributed to improvements in people’s outlooks and sense of wellbeing over time.
So there is an interplay between physical works in flood mitigation and resilience, for example the bunds that have been constructed and the dredging that has ben done – alongside the talking therapies that are important here in combining to elevate peoples well-being and allow them to see a positive future for themselves and their communities.
In the survey we also asked specific questions about the role of the community during the floods, and it is clear how important the community was. Just over 84% of people agreed with the statement that the community spirit made it easier to deal with the floods and 85% of respondents agreed with the statement that the communities provided support that was not available from the authorities.
This quote here exemplifies how social capital or the links and networks have, can help combat the detrimental impacts of flooding on victims well-being. This quote and the rest of the participants transcript, speaks about the challenges and difficulties of living in a house where the downstairs is flooded, and where you have to put waders on just to go downstairs and you can’t use the toilet because the septic tank ahs flooded.. And yet, his networks of friends, who were also living in similar conditions, and the support that they gave him, allowed him to to, as he puts it here, have breaks of comedy in the nightmare.
From participants who had been evacuated, and placed in emergency housing or found their own alternative accommodation, there are additional stresses, for example not having all your belongings and then later on, not being present when builders start work on your own home. Residents who are evacuated also lose the support of local friends and neighbors, so the support that might have been available form the community was no longer there. . The survey results clearly show the impact on well being of evacuation, those evacuated show significantly lower wellbeing scores during the flood and 12 month after the flood, compared to those who were not evacuated (t (53.55) = -5.292, p<0.001).
In some cases as documented in the quote, people themselves actively put measures in place to overcome the loss of community support. Here the participant is talking about a Keep In Touch scheme they set up, to provide support to members of their community that were no longer in the same geographical location. Later on in the transcript they specifically mention the elderly some of whom had been moved into residential care homes and were feeling particularly isolated. So the evacuation is an example of how institutional response can detrimentally effect community wellbeing and resilience, but also an example where simple measure, such as keep in touch groups, can ameliorate the negative impacts of evacuations.
Some brief conclusions, our research shows that there is a really important social dimension to resilience that should be considered, and that resilience is just about infrastructure and property level defenses.
And that there are strong links between resilient communities and individual well0being, and that people with a positive outlook can cope flood events more positively and have a more positive outlook about the future
Finally, I have given example of where institutional support mechanisms can positively impact well-being such as the Warrior programe I mentioned, but they can in some cases detrimentally affect well-being, yet there are mechanism by which this can be reduced, for example the keep in touch group for those evacuated.
