Kate arrives at Anna Freud charity as project to boost health visitors launched

The Princess of Wales has arrived at the children’s mental health charity Anna Freud to learn about a project it is working on to enhance the skills of health visitors.

Kate’s Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood has launched an initiative with Anna Freud to create a training curriculum for health visitors to help their work supporting the early social and emotional development of children.

Since 2016 the princess has been patron of Anna Freud, one of the country’s leading organisations for evidence-based research and training on children, young people and families’ mental health.

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.”

The princess began her visit at the institution’s offices in central London on Thursday by meeting families who are working with Anna Freud and the Institute of Health Visitors to shape the new initiative.