Ciara tell me about your role within this building resilience and communities project.

So I am the resilience manager with the local resilience team and I project manage the brick project and the aim of our project really is strengthening links with existing structures so that's our local councils our health trust the community voluntary sector and it's very much about working in partnership to promote and embed community resilience, which really means strong and connected communities.

So we have two community resilience officers working on the project and they work collectively across all councils, building those relationships, placing communities very much at the centre to strengthen the ability of communities to prepare for, withstand, respond to and recover from emergencies together.

And as Seamus says, it's that warming and informing part and communities taking certain actions themselves.

which then means that our Blue Light colleagues are able to respond to those most vulnerable in communities.

So this project, funded by DfA, is a unique opportunity to put communities and community voices at the centre, to value their work, because we all know they're always the first and the last to respond to emergencies, and to work collectively to meet present and future challenges.

That's obviously a really challenging thing to do.

yeah absolutely the community resilience officers are outreach they're working with dfi identified community resilience groups in areas that are prone to flooding so obviously there are people and households that have flooded before and are likely to do so again so those conversations can be very difficult people are in very vulnerable and difficult situations so it's what the officers can do in terms of accessing further help perhaps from age-friendly coordinators, health and equality workers may be informed about additional support that's available.