Published March 2023

Key messages:
- Relationships are foundational to all public health practices and activities to support community psychosocial and mental health post-flooding.
- When strong relationships are established, people involved in flood response can quickly mobilize and work together towards community recovery. Strong relationships can reduce reliance on external supports and facilitate a greater reach among community members, including people who are isolated or systemically excluded.
- Relationships take time and energy to develop and maintain and people in the relationships are not interchangeable. It is valuable to invest time and resources into creating and maintaining relationships and trust within communities, across levels of government, and with Indigenous nations. This usually requires leadership and funding support.
- We identified seven public health practices for supporting community psychosocial and mental health recovery after a flood: centring community leadership; strengthening community connections; centring reconciliation and Indigenous views of well-being; prioritizing and supporting responder well-being; collaborating and coordinating between public health, other sectors, and external agencies; communicating and engaging with community; and gathering and sharing insights, stories, and lessons learned.
- Public health and psychosocial emergency responders must adapt their practices to the strengths, needs, resources, and relationship structures of their specific community and unique disaster context. We provide a list of Canadian resources and tools that can be adapted to the local context. (From the website). Record #8070