Kate Middleton is learning how babies are interacting with the world around them — and ensuring they have the best start to life possible.
The Princess of Wales, 41, spent Thursday morning in Nuneaton, in England's Midlands, where she spoke with health professionals and families about the support they are receiving in those first key months after a baby is born. Health visitors are the professionals who families see most in the first months and years of their children's lives.
The health visitors Kate met are taking part in a pioneering field study — backed by her Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood — which is designed to support the profession to promote infant well-being as well as social and emotional development.
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The Centre for Early Childhood has provided a $64,000 (£50,000) grant for the study, which will evaluate the use of the Alarm Distress Baby Scale (ADBB) that supports parent-infant relationships and early childhood development. It is used to assess how babies are interacting with the world around them, focusing on behaviors like eye contact, facial expressions, vocalization and activity levels. The device can help health practitioners and families to better understand the ways babies express their feelings.
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During the outing at Riversley Park Children's Centre, Princess Kate sat in a circle of babies on adult's laps, calming holding the hand of the child seated next to her and stroking the little one's arm with her thumb.
Following the event, Kate's team shared photos on her joint Instagram page with Prince William.
"Lovely chatting with the wonderful health visitors and mums playing a part in creating a nurturing environment for so many children and parents at the Riversley Park Children's Centre in Nuneaton. Health Visitors are such an important support for new parents from pregnancy through to children starting school," they wrote. "It was also great to hear how @earlychildhood trials of the Alarm Distress Baby Scale are going, reminding us how important innovation is in #ShapingUs."
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Kate previously saw the ADBB at work when she visited Denmark last year and came home wanting to explore whether it could be introduced in the U.K. so and her Centre for Early Childhood has been working closely with the Institute of Health Visiting to explore the potential for implementation of it.
As she goes around the country and meets parents like herself, Kate loves to hear more from those who are actually working in the area.
During a visit to Wales in April, the royal got into a long conversation with a pair of health visitors who had come out to see her and Prince William. In fact, it was the Prince of Wales, 40, who beckoned his wife over, saying, “Catherine, health visitors." Standing in the rain, Kate passed on some of her own reflections of the challenges facing families and healthcare workers that she has picked up during her ongoing early years campaign.
Kimberly Woodward told PEOPLE that they see Kate as a "driver” of debate about “a lot of issues here in the U.K. like poverty and how people need the service." Health visitors are often the healthcare workers new mothers see the most in the months after giving birth.
"She was talking about early intervention and we were talking about the increase in baby banks in the area, providing [diapers] due to the cost of living crisis, and she told us she’d visited one this week and she met with midwives recently,” Woodward says. "It’s really important – to have her name behind the drive for early years transition. She seems passionate.”
She adds, "As soon as Prince William heard we were health visitors, he said, 'My wife’s going to want to know about this.' "
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This year has seen important developments for Kate and her early years' work as she launched Shaping Us, which aims to raise awareness of "the critical importance of early childhood and how it shapes the adults we become," as she put it in January.
The visit to Nuneaton on Thursday was all part of Kate’s ongoing effort to encourage the best research and practices into helping families, and babies, in their first five years. She and her foundation are working closely with people from across the private, public and voluntary sectors, as they build up a library of knowledge and shared experience in best practices that can help bring new solutions and inspire action for positive change in the early years.
While Princess Kate and Prince William are parents of three — Prince George, 9, Princess Charlotte, 8, and Prince Louis, 5 — Kate has hinted that she is sometimes tempted to have another little one during outings with children. And with her work focused on children, being around babies and toddlers often poses an occupational hazard for Kate!
"I love babies," Kate said during a June 2022 outing where she asked to hold a 4-month-old girl named Norah.
Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales.Phil Noble - WPA Pool/Getty Images
And during a visit to a Scottish class where students were learning about empathy by observing an infant — A.K.A. their "tiny teacher," Saul! — Prince William quipped, "Can you get my wife out of here before she gets broody?"
On the first day of her solo royal tour in Denmark in February 2022, Princess Kate met with parents and their babies during a visit to the University of Copenhagen.
"It makes me very broody," the royal shared. "William always worries about me meeting under 1-year-olds. I come home saying, 'Let's have another one.' "
