The Princess of Wales visited children’s mental health charity Anna Freud today to learn about a project to enhance the skills of health visitors.
Kate’s Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood has launched an initiative with Anna Freud in London to create a training curriculum for health visitors.
The scheme backed by the 43-year-old future queen aims to help their work supporting the early social and emotional development of children.
Since 2016 she has been patron of the organisation which carries out evidence-based research and training on children, young people and families’ mental health.
Kate began her visit to the institution’s offices by meeting families who are working with Anna Freud and the Institute of Health Visitors to shape the new scheme.
The Princess appeared in good spirits as she waved and smiled while wearing a black and white collared dress with grey pumps, a brown clutch and dainty earrings.
Kate met with the organisation’s chief executive Professor Eamon McCrory at the Anna Freud Centre near King’s Cross to discuss its work with mental health.
She also joined roundtable discussions with experts, young people, educators and guests to discuss how to create strong relationships within communities where children and young people’s wellbeing can be supported.
The new project will be informed by the Royal Foundation Centre’s Shaping Us Framework and will create a workforce development programme.
Its stated aim is ensure more babies and young children develop the social and emotional foundations they need for a happy and healthy life.
Last week, Kate used her first major public speech in two years to call on business leaders to prioritise ‘time and tenderness just as much as productivity and success’.
She told a gathering of senior executives in the City of London that ‘profitability’ and making a ‘positive impact’ are not ‘incompatible’, at the summit hosted by her Royal Foundation to drive action and investment in the early years development of children.
Delivering the summit’s opening speech, Kate told guests her passion for promoting early years, described in the past as her ‘life’s work’, stemmed from the ‘essential truth’ that ‘the love we feel in our earliest years fundamentally shapes who we become and how we thrive as adults’.
She went on to say: ‘A loving home ultimately teaches us how to love and how to care, but every environment has the potential to shape our hearts.
‘Every one of you interacts with your own environment; a home, a family, a business, a workforce, a community. These are the ecosystems that you yourselves help to weave.’
