A Potted History of The Princess of Wales and the Early Years
I had an idea, at about 6 o'clock this evening, to go through everything Catherine has done with the Early Years before tomorrow and this has been rushed but let's go...
After marrying Prince William in 2011, the then-Duchess of Cambridge began working with a number of grass-roots charities, which focused on mental health, addiction, and hospice care. Her first set of patronages - announced in January 2012 - included three charities within this sphere: Action on Addiction, The Art Room and EACH. Early the following year, Place2Be joined her list of patronages. During this time, Catherine visited her patronages, as well as other charities, and began to develop an understanding of the importance of childhood and mental health. She also made a number of private visits to children's hospices and her patronages. In 2013, she became a mother for the first time, which she spoke about in a 2020 podcast with Giovanna Fletcher (Happy Mum, Happy Baby), allowing her insight into what new mums experienced. It was around the same time she first began to publicly support Children's Hospice Week.
Her work continued to develop and she began supporting the initiatives started by her patronages, such as M-PACT, which aims to improve the well-being of children and families affected by substance misuse. In 2015, Catherine began to engage in more "taboo" topics, such as fostering and the care system, as well as hospital schools, and women in prisons. By doing this, she was able to see how early intervention could positively impact on young lives. Catherine also undertook an engagement with Mind (her first engagement on World Mental Health Day) and began to meet with professionals, such as headteachers, to develop her knowledge.
In 2016, Catherine supported the first ever Children's Mental Health Week (fun fact, in 2021, Kensington Palace retweeted some CMHW work I did in school). She also guest edited the Huffington Post, promoting Young Minds Matter. She became Patron of both the Anna Freud Centre for Children and Familes and Action for Children that year (a representative from both patronages is in her recently-convened Early Years Advisory Group). 2016 also saw Catherine bring together her work along with her husband's and brother-in-law's to set up Heads Together, an awareness campaign focusing on mental health. The trio also continued to celebrate World Mental Health Day, which they would continue to do for many years.
The then-Duchess of Cambridge visted the Anna Freud Centre’s Early Years Parenting Unit, which works with parents who have personality disorders and aims to help them seek help and keep families together. Throughout this period, she undertook a number of engagements focusing on promoting Heads Together, including releasing a personal video alongside William and Harry for #OktoSay and appearing on BBC Radio 1. Heads Together culminated in the 2017 London Marathon, which she attended. 2018 saw Catherine begin to promote Mentally Healthy Schools. She also continued to expand her range of interests, attending the Headstart conference privately and visiting GOSH.
She continued to develop her interests and began looking into neuroscience and its impact on mental health and early development. She also, for the first time, began showing an interest in the perinatal, with her also becoming Patron of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. In mid-2018, Catherine attended a symposium on the importance of early intervention. That year, she also convened an Early Years Steering group - showing the beginnings of her current work - and attended the Mental Health in Education Conference.
Alongside William, she met with the BBC, where she spoke about children's wellbeing and the positive impact media can have. She also undertook a two-week private work placement at Kingston Hospital, on the maternity wards. In 2020, Catherine launched 5 Big Questions, and promoted this with a UK-wide tour, including a return visit to HMP Send. The questions were in the form of a short survey, open to the public.
The afore-mentioned Happy Mum, Happy Baby podcast aired in early 2020. During the chat, Catherine confessed to feeling upset and scared after the birth of George, and spoke about the importance of mums' seeking help. During the pandemic, she chaired a Zoom roundtable of health professionals and joined a number of calls with midwives. Throughout the pandemic, a number of her Zoom calls and phone meetings were held with medical and mental health professionals, as well as with schools, children, parents and young families. She leant her public support to the BBC's Tiny Happy People project, as well.
Catherine used her resources to pull together donations for Baby Banks in the summer of 2020, and confessed to volunteering for her local Norfolk branch in her own time. The partnerships created by Catherine continue to this day. She met with parents and peers who have been supported by peer-to-peer parent-led support programmes, as well as representatives from Home-Start UK and the National Childbirth Trust. She continued her work with the Scouts, with whom she had been volunteering from the early days of her marriage, and continued to promote the importance of the outdoors, an area she really focused on when producing her Back to Nature garden in 2018. The Duchess of Cambridge also looked at miscarriages, during a visit to Tommy's. The results of her 5 Big Questions survey were shared as 5 Big Insights later that year. Catherine met with First Lady Jill Biden in 2021, with whom she co-hosted a roundtable discussion with a number of representatives from the early years sector.
In 2021, Catherine finally launched the Royal Foundation's Centre for Early Childhood. Since the launch of the Centre, she has continued to develop her understanding of early neurodevelopment, and travelled to Denmark - world leader's in childhood mental health - to learn how they promote early years wellbeing. Catherine continued to focus on young people, with a long-awaited appearance on CBeebies Bedtime Stories, where she read The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, a book she later shared was one of her childhood favourites. During the year, she became Patron of the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, adding to the other child-focused patronages she had gained over the years (including Family Action and Evelina London). Catherine hosted another roundtable to learn about the progress made by the Centre for Early Childhood and recently convened an Early Years Advisory Group. Throughout the past few years, she has attended regular "Early Years" meetings.
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Catherine, William + Harry | Heads Together | #oktosay
I urge people the watch or rewatch this…..
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Me.
I feel like I'm teetering at the moment. I feel like I'm walking on this tightrope, and when I'm balanced, life is okay, and I'm content. If I lose my balance, I fall. If I fall one way, I'm on top of the world, have complete confidence in myself, like nothing can go wrong. If I fall the other way, I crash. I'm depressed, suicidal, likely to relapse in my self harm. Either way, my anxiety rockets, and I fall back into bad habits (especially drinking too much). I feel like I'm teetering on the edge at the moment, but I have no idea what the outcome of the fall will be until I land.
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🧠"Please find it within your Heart to dig deep, £1 will support somone who has tackled and struggling with mental health. 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem and most of the time this has gone undetected let's make a change."!!! 🎁💷💸💶💵💴💰💳 @mentalhealthfoundation @heads_together @kensingtonroyal #mentalhealth #headstogether #oktosay #thereforme @facebook (at London, United Kingdom) https://www.instagram.com/p/BtBNs0bFf0c/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=c0lw9jowo0a
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