‘It came up to here’: learning from children's flood narratives

Abstract

The growing body of literature that seeks to understand the social impacts of flooding has failed to recognise the value of children's knowledge. Working with a group of flood-affected children in Hull using a storyboard methodology, this paper argues that the children have specific flood experiences that need to be understood in their own right. In this paper, we consider the ways in which the disruption caused by the flood revealed and produced new – and sometimes hidden – vulnerabilities and forms of resilience and we reflect on the ways in which paying attention to children's perspectives enhances our understanding of resilience.

Keywords:

• flood-affected children
• flood recovery
• resilience
• storyboard methodologies
• Hull floods

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all of the children and young people who contributed to the project; they have been our inspiration throughout this research. Our thanks also go to the key service providers, front line workers and staff at the participating schools and youth groups for their co-operation in helping us to conduct the research. The project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Environment Agency and Hull City Council.

Notes

See the project report (Walker et al. 2010) for more details regarding the methodology.

To maintain anonymity, pseudonyms have been used for both the schools and the participants.

The project steering group comprised local and national organisations with an interest in children's welfare and flood recovery: Lancaster University, the University of Surrey, Middlesex University, Hull City Council, the Environment Agency and representatives from the participating schools. The steering group was involved at all stages of the project from the original phases of designing the methodology through to later phases of analysis and dissemination.

School year and participant's age provided at the time of the interview.