The Princess of Wales stopped galloping in a forest long enough to “announce” a new project for the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood. It honestly sounds like this new project is something minor, and something put together by other groups, and perhaps the Royal Foundation merely came in to fund this new pilot program. If that’s the case… so be it, you know? I’d much rather see the “Centre for Early Childhood” just work quietly and fund “pilot programs” and release statements. That’s actually more effective than Kate blowing through money to create creepy claymation or wasting everyone’s time trying to prove that she’s a “data-driven credible expert” on early childhood development. Unleash the pie charts!
The Princess of Wales’s Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood has today announced plans to fund a new innovative mental health pilot to better understand young children’s development in early education. Princess Kate has long championed the importance of social and emotional development as critically important for enabling babies and young children to be mentally healthy, both in the short term and for the long-lasting impact on the rest of their lives.
It was one of the projects she was quietly working on behind the scenes despite undergoing cancer treatment last year after her diagnosis. The new pilot, called Happy Little Minds, aims to better understand how mental health experts in early education settings can support babies and young children’s social and emotional development.
The announcement, shared by Kensington Palace, comes during Infant Mental Health Awareness Week which this year takes place from June 9 until June 15 with the theme being “Who is holding the baby?”.
The pilot is a collaboration between leading children’s charities Barnardo’s and Place2Be, and will see mental health practitioners providing bespoke training and ongoing consultation about social and emotional development for nearly 50 early education practitioners in two nurseries in Tower Hamlets and Hackney.
According to the Centre for Early Childhood, the practitioners will also provide guidance for parents and directly work with some children and families. The pilot, which is due to start this month and take place over the course of 12 months, will benefit around 150 babies, young children and their families.
This is the second pilot funded by The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood. In 2023, it funded a trial of an observation tool for Health Visitors, known internationally as the Alarm Distress Baby Scale (ADBB), which focuses on a baby’s social behaviours such as eye contact, facial expression, vocalisation, and activity levels to help practitioners and families better understand the ways babies express their feelings. After a two-year trial, the pilot was this year expanded to eight NHS sites, aside from the original two NHS trusts, following the positive results, with the phase set to run until March 2026.
Isn’t there a huge crisis in funding for nursery schools and daycare for working parents in the UK? No judgment – there’s a huge crisis in nursery schools and daycare access here in America as well. My point is more… maybe the Early Childhood Centre should actually give funding to nursery schools so that they can provide early education for more children? I’m not trying to dismiss the main thrust of this pilot program, but if early-childhood educational access is really in crisis, doesn’t funding a pilot program which “studies” the effects of children’s mental health feel like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images, Kensington Palace.
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- London, UK, 04 February 2025: Catherine, The Princess of Wales joined a group of four and five-year-old school children at the National Portrait.Gallery and launched a new project from The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood aimed at supporting young children in the development of crucial social and emotional skills.,Image: 960115471, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: *** NO UK USE FOR 48 HRS ***, Model Release: no, Credit line: Arthur Edwards/Avalon/Avalon
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- The Princess of Wales at the British Fashion Council at 180 Studios in central London, where she will present the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design. Picture date: Tuesday May 13, 2025. PA Photo. See PA story ROYAL Kate.,Image: 998555925, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: *** NO UK USE FOR 48 HRS ***, Model Release: no, Credit line: Aaron Chown/Avalon
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- MccLi0014289 ©Eddie Mulholland ROTA The Princess of Wales visiting the V&A East Storehouse, a brand-new cultural destination in east London,to highlight the importance of creative opportunity and celebrate the joy found in creative expression. Opened on 31 May, V&A East Storehouse reinvents the idea of a museum store and offers free,unprecedented public access to the V&A collections and archives. PIC : HRH in The Cloth Working Centre.,Image: 1009294977, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: *** NO UK USE FOR 48 HRS ***, Model Release: no, Credit line: Eddie Mulholland/Avalon
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- MccLi0014289 ©Eddie Mulholland ROTA The Princess of Wales visiting the V&A East Storehouse, a brand-new cultural destination in east London,to highlight the importance of creative opportunity and celebrate the joy found in creative expression. Opened on 31 May, V&A East Storehouse reinvents the idea of a museum store and offers free,unprecedented public access to the V&A collections and archives.,Image: 1009295050, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: *** NO UK USE FOR 48 HRS ***, Model Release: no, Credit line: Eddie Mulholland for The Telegraph/Avalon
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- London, UNITED KINGDOM – Catherine, The Princess of Wales, visits a brand new cultural destination in London. Pictured: Catherine – Princess of Wales – Kate Middleton BACKGRID USA 10 JUNE 2025 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- London, UNITED KINGDOM – The Princess of Wales visits the V&A East Storehouse, a brand-new cultural destination to highlight the importance of creative opportunity and celebrate the joy found in creative expression in Stratford, London, UK. Pictured: Catherine, Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales BACKGRID USA 10 JUNE 2025 USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- The Princess of Wales talks to guests during a Royal Garden Party at Buckingham Palace, London Featuring: Catherine, Princess of Wales Where: London, United Kingdom When: 20 May 2025 Credit: PA Images/INSTARimages **NORTH AMERICA RIGHTS ONLY**
Oh these accompanying photos are chef’s kiss! 😂
Right?! The one with the little girl picking her nose and Kate looking gormless (and dreaming of being on a beach somewhere), as usual. 🤣 That’s a classic.
And “unleash the pie charts” – Kaiser is on fire today.
The photos that they allow to be seen by the public make me question if these people in the media and palace actually like Kate, because if I was someone who was connected to her and I really cared about fluffing up her lackluster image, I would have made sure that photos like these were burnt to a crisp and never to be seen by anyone. She has too many unflattering photos out there to be seen by the public for there to be anyone who actually likes her.
@nerd I’ve often wondered if these pictures really are the best they can do. Maybe what was rejected is way worse
She’s been infantilised by the rats so it makes sense that she focuses on babies. Can’t exert and stress her vacuous character.
You know what would make a happy baby? Not stress their parents by throwing them to the rats, staying silent on printed lies and not asking questions about the colour of the baby’s skin!
Racist Lazy on a futile mission again to justify her laziness. What a waste of space.
So unbelievably clueless. She has no idea how the real world functions and what children’s needs are. She needs to go away and stay away; stop wasting everyone’s time and energy.
So now they are straight up lying and saying she was working on this while getting cancer treatment?
Must. Put. Lies. Out. About. Working. While. Having. Fake. Cancer!!!!!
There was a time during her missing months when they proclaimed that oh, no, Kate’s working, she’s reading reports from her bed. I think it was around the time William referenced the two Filipino nurses.
The Royal Foundation as a whole is pretty small and it includes several ambitious aims – I don’t think there’s enough money there to support nursery schools.
I’ll never understand how Kate and the media can compartmentalise mental health. So Kate is working to improve, promote mental health of some children children she doesn’t know, but had no care for Archie’s mental health? Or Lilibets? That’s why she abused their pregnant mother, their lactating mother with the help of the media now writing these glowing articles? And no one in Britain is ethical enough to question this?
That is why their words and actions mean nothing regarding mental health, early childhood development, racism or the environment. Everything they have each pretended to make their cause or mission goes against who they are as people and family members towards Diana, Harry, Meghan, Archie and Lilibet. Charles as the head of the Church of England and Camilla with causes against violence against women are the two adulterers who made the life of a young Diana difficult until her death and used her children to get media favor. William had the audacity to call his mother paranoid and used his staff and media to abuse his brother, SIL and their children while pretending to work with Heads Together and other mental health causes. Kate joining her husband in her fake support of mental health causes and now with Early Years, while allowing HER LIE to be used to abuse and threaten the lives of her pregnant SIL while pregnant three times. She never once corrected that lie even after learning about the miscarriage her BIL and SIL had with their second pregnancy. She didn’t even care to correct the lie when they were talking about their rainbow pregnancy with Lilibet. No one who genuinely cares about children would contribute to the abuse of a pregnant woman and they definitely wouldn’t have concerns about the potential skin tone of their BIL and SIL’s children. I question anyone who easily ignores who these people are and choose to attack Harry and Meghan for refusing to raise their children in such toxicity.
It would have been nice if Kate had visited the two nurseries this week to highlight this new programme. I guess that’s too much to ask of Kate.
You see, Amy Bee, this would require effort. Effort includes shaping a new wig and stapling it neatly onto one’s head, ingesting X amount of uppers to fix a dead grin onto one’s face, and forming sentences with people for whom one cares less than nothing. Why make effort when one could easily instead waste away in the privacy of home, with nannies, chefs, valets, drivers, lawn manicurists, etc. to worry over the things that only serfs trifle with?
No, far simpler to have your staff do all the planning, and apply your name to a finished product. How can you lose? Credit and a valid cause. I’m not even certain she knows this was done, to be honest.
I think overall, we will see less and less of her, for shorter and shorter periods, until the truth is finally revealed, or William officially puts her out to pasture. Whichever comes first. I’m certain that he knows she is mentally unwell.
Good point, @AmyBee. Somebody issued a statement on her behalf and her engagement doesn’t go beyond that. Yawn. Possibly the “meeting” she took last week was to update her that this was going on, if so the update probably happened over Zoom and could have taken all of 15 minutes. But then again, her “meeting” last week could have been about weeds in the lawn around Anmer, who knows.
So I actually clicked on the linked article for once, and it doesn’t really sound like she had much to do with this other than maybe the Royal Foundation providing some funds?
From the description in the article the two companies that are teaming up for this pilot met at her symposium, discussed the pilot, worked out all the details of how to set it up, and what organizations would probably be on board, and once all that was done went back to the Royal Foundation and asked for money. It doesn’t mention her at all attending meetings or even introducing people and saying I have an idea and this is something you should do.
Which to be fair, in a lot of charitable organizations the person at the head isn’t doing that, but they aren’t pretending that this person is in the trenches and the reason that this entire endeavor exists is because of their hard work. I wonder if she even knew about this before it was announced.
KP did hire staffers for the EY iirc. At least one. Who I think is a somewhat young guy. So it does feel like a lot if this happens and then she get updates.
Agree that the foundation only donates money but gives Kate all of the credit.
🎯 She is doing nothing. Just the staffs of royal foundation collects funs and directs it to the other foundations. It is super waste of money to have saperate foundation for early childhood. Already royal foundation is working as an umbrella foundation. They don’t get enough funds to support causes as the don’t have any proper initiatives to collect funds. Majority of its money goes to run the foundation.
And having another umbrella foundation to direct the funds from mother foundation is absolutely idiotic. In the past four years she, sorry her staffs funded only two programmes. According to their website the second phase fund for the first project was around 200k.
Link:
https://centreforearlychildhood.org/news-insights/news/thousands-more-families-to-benefit-as-trial-to-promote-babies-wellbeing-expands/
If I assume this amount for first phase and the new project. The amount is around 600k. The annual cost of running a child foundation (with around 5 or 6 staffs with minimum salary. But actually the director would earn more), let’s say atleast 15000 per month (staffs, meeting, travelling and all. It would cost more but I consider minimum amount) 180k per annum. So for 4 years 720k. The maintenance cost is very high compared to what they fund. Please Catherine dissolve your centre for eary childhood and let it happen through Royal foundation. Because royal foundation alone can suck atleast a million through maintenance and administration costs. The funds are being wasted.
The funny part about this article is that the very first sentence says that she “plans to fund” this initiative and not that she actually has. Then to avoid disclosing the amount of how much she plans to fund is also funny.
This project actually sounds like it could generate useful information. Having actual data that could be used to prioritize programs that can provide real benefits for young children.
It also sounds like leaving it up to the professionals to come up with the ideas and the foundation providing some seed money is a good thing.
I’m not going to get super enthusiastic about this but financially supporting real organizations that have early childhood expertise is a much better use of money than claymation videos.
You know your point is why I actually clicked on the article to read it. This does sound like a good program, and I’m not a hater. If Will and Kate are going to support something that has a net positive I’m all for it regardless of how I feel about them personally. But she shouldn’t be getting credited for it like it’s Invictus or Smartworks.
This would be no different than if Harry and Meghan pretended that Altadena Girls was their project instead of them saying, ” wow that is a fantastic idea here’s some money so you can keep doing your work”.
And did none of the work
She probably has no idea they even did this.
I seriously doubt that the person who had difficulties saying two phrases without looking a paper during the inauguration of a ship, not to mention her mumbling during her last engagement, could possibly be the mastermind behind a similar project….unfortunately, I even doubt her capability to understand the purpose of the initiative…and last week’s meeting was probably mentioned as to show how Kate’s working on the project…
In a world where Murdoch was not ever allowed to own media due to his insane pro gop, pro rich man, pro racist agenda- would we have this thing, where the Sussex’s do all these real money making and charitable projects (Invictus is incredibly impressive) and the Windors’ flit about and make vague statements and generalized things that never amount to any real good…. would the british press declare the windsors perfect and the Sussex’s as the worst, failing, idiot, desperate (wealthy, tan, well fed, joyful) people who ever lived?
So it sounds as if her foundation “plans to contribute” an undisclosed amount of funds and did the usual of not working and taking credit for what others had already done, which is form a partnership to pilot a program to learn about ways to better assist children and their mental health. She has contributed nothing to anything that could be done without her, and obviously was done without her besides the occasional listening in on grown adults who have ambition and a desire to help others. She’s been in that family for too long to have not made any impact in the lives of others.
All of this.
And saying she was quietly working on this during her cancer break makes no sense. The pilot program was put together by other people. All she did –if even this — was to agree to throw some money at it.
The pie chart photos will always give me LIFE😁🤪😂🤣
How they didn’t see how ridiculous Kate looked is beyond me!
All of this.
And saying she was quietly working on this during her cancer break makes no sense. The pilot program was put together by other people. All she did –if even this — was to agree to throw some money at it.
I’ve noticed that every 6 months approximately they announce something, something about early years for Kate and something for William…they have to stay in the news circuit…I don’t doubt that some of the projects suggested could have legitimate impacts on people, communities or charities but that’s unfortunately a side effect for both of them…the important thing for these initiatives is to promote them as caring and working behind the scenes for the people in Britain…I seriously doubt that either of them had any involvement in the recent projects apart from their appearance in a relative location…anyway, they always choose the weekend before trooping/ father’s day….last year, we had Kate’s emergence and William’s homeless project in an effort to capture attention from Charles, maybe? The palaces seem to be fighting… but let’s write again about Harry not attending trooping after leaving 6 years ago…
No, they have no influence, because both William and Kate only announce projects, but NEVER do them. The only ones that are implemented are those that various foundations are working on, and when everything is ready, William or Kate comes forward and offers the foundation to visit them, to “represent” them, which consists of announcing that “they implemented a project”, and not a word about the foundation and the people who worked on it.
Never want to get involved without really getting involved. It never sounds like something is really getting done. Studies and starting conversations and learning.
I am always throwing my hangs up in the air or facepalming myself whenever Kate announces that she did something. And they dare say that she did this while being in treatment for cancer: um, what did she do exactly? It’s a collaboration between 2 organizations, what did she actually do again? Oh yes, something about it an ipad and in bed.
… in other words, Kate is just lending her name to it, nothing more? She’s not “working” at a single thing. Early years is an ongoing joke, and this latest nonsense is only saying it again, “early years are important.” What a bunch of bollocks.
@Kaiser, the problem with just funding nurseries is that it takes several orders of magnitude more money than these people are willing to expend… and it doesn’t come with sexy headlines.
‘Plans to fund’ or actually is funding? Sounds interesting, but to pretend Kate was working on this from her sickbed–and remember, they told us she did this–is nonsense. Barnardo’s and Place2Be came up with this, Katiekin’s little make-work foundation is providing some funds. Or they’re planning to, whatever.
And they’re a little all over the place with the messaging. Is it Happy Little Minds or Who is Holding the Baby? Sounds like Broken Britain or Shaping Us. And I think there was something in between? It’s possible there’s some good work being done here in the early childhood development realm but the Daily Express employs some p*ss-poor writers so it’s hard to tell.
There’s already loads of research and scholarship out in the world about this topic. Pretending that she’s contributing something is ridiculous
Yes, @ONE OF TGE MARYS
The researches & theories on Early Childhood Development & Psychology have been out there with results for more the 30 years. This “new innovative mental health pilot to better understand young children’s development in early education.” just made me wonder what the UK Government had done or not done for the welling of their youth in all theses years? They would be better to feed those millions of hungry kids in the UK first, or is this pilot program only applying to affluent school districts?
This reeks of class condescension. Instead of lecturing the parents of the lower class areas of Tower Hamlets and Hackney, perhaps she should direct her advice at her upper class contemporaries, who fob off parenting duties to Nannies and au pairs and send their children off to boarding school at the earliest opportunity.
The royal family itself is the embodiment of bad parenting!
This reeks of class condescension. Instead of lecturing the lower class areas of Tower Hamlets and Hackney, perhaps she should direct her advice at her upper class contemporaries, who fob off parenting duties to nannies and au pairs and send their children off to boarding school at the earliest opportunity.
The royal family itself is the embodiment of bad parenting.
Hehehe, don’t make me laugh – “Wality giving lectures” :)))
She can’t put together a single sentence, even read it properly from a piece of paper, and where is her lecture. She also can’t lecture the aristocracy for several reasons: firstly, the aristocracy has her where the sun doesn’t shine, secondly, how can she persuade them to take care of the children if they don’t do it themselves. Apart from the fact that – unfortunately – they live with Kate at Carole’s, Adelaide stands empty – unless they are at their father’s in KP, especially George – each of the children has nannies and had a governess, Maria, who was fired after informing a Spanish journalist about Kate’s coma.
Their taking care of the children is as much of a fiction as their “successful” marriage.
holy moly, KoRAR!! Dropping a bomb here on my head! I did not know Maria was fired for informing a Spanish journalist about Kate’s coma. Is that surmised from the timing of events or has that been proven as a fact? Either way, it’s an interesting theory, one that hadn’t occurred to me.
This is ridiculous. There is no need for this pilot. Why KP insists on making Princess C more special and different than any other royal wife there has ever lived? She is not interested in working for ambitious goals. She doesn’t care about impact. Let her be boring and stay out of limelight.