Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:22 pm on 23 March 2022.
I wanted to add to the points about the physiological scarring brought about by flooding. In February 2020, I visited streets in Ystrad Mynach that had been hit by flooding. Whole homes were swamped with water and cars written off. But the thing that stayed with me is the impact on residents' children. A number of them told me that their children were traumatised with worry, that they'd lost their toys, and they were asking if their pets could sleep upstairs because they were worried that the same thing would happen again and that their pets would drown, and they were frightened every time it rained. I called at the time for counselling support to be made available for children who were affected by flooding. I hope that any forum in the future will address this. We need to make sure that local voices are heard and that initiatives to restore and protect buildings are matched by a determination to support residents' mental health.