Princess Kate spent the morning at a women’s prison in Cheshire to visit its Mother and Baby Unit, which helps prisoners with babies up to 18 months old
The Princess of Wales has dedicated herself to promoting early childhood development and she stepped out for an especially poignant outing on Tuesday.
Princess Kate travelled to HMP Styal in Cheshire to meet inmates from the women’s prison using the services provided by the Mother and Baby Unit unit, run by Action for Children. The Princess was there to highlight the importance of strong, loving and consistent mother and baby relationships to a child’s development, even in the most challenging of environments.
The unit aims to establish and maintain a strong bond between mother and child, in line with evidence that a key psychological process of attachment takes place between babies and their primary caregiver in the initial months of life, which influences later development.
The unit is a dedicated space for new and expectant mothers serving a prison sentence or on remand, which sees the prisoners live in a separate wing. They are supported to care for their babies by trained prison staff and early years and family support practitioners.
Princess Kate is passionate about raising awareness and taking action to support children in their first five years of life. She has called this work her “life’s work”.
Her early years work also includes the launch in 2021 of the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, which aims to raise awareness of the importance of early childhood, and her Shaping Us campaign, to help increase public understanding of the importance of the first five years of a child’s life.
The event was Kate’s fifth public engagement in just over two weeks as she continues her gradual return to official duties since completing her cancer treatment. HMP Styal is a prison and young offender institution (YOI) for women aged 18 and over.
It houses around 480 inmates and has a Mother and Baby Unit for prisoners with babies up to 18 months, which is run by the Action for Children charity. Princess Kate has been Royal Patron of Action for Children since December 2016, following on from Her Majesty the Queen.
