Kate Middleton visits Anna Freud as Princess’ partnership with family and mental health outfit hits 10 years

Kate Middleton was all smiles as she visited a North London mental health charity that has been a constant in her life for a decade.

Princess Kate, 43, headed to Anna Freud, to help highlight the charity’s work and its crossover with her own Centre for Early Childhood, aimed at helping train health visitors, the UK workers who aid women shortly after giving birth. The collaboration between the two organisations will look at early social and emotional development for child and mother.

That focus on early childhood mental health from infancy through to teenage years was addressed by Anna Freud boss Professor Eamon McCrory in discussions with the Princess during her visit.

Unsurprisingly, Princess Kate also was a natural when it came to mingling with parents and toddlers at Anna Freud during her visit.

Professor McCrory told PEOPLE: “The princess has such a natural down-to-earth manner and very quickly became comfortable in talking to parents bout their experiences.

“She sat down and played with the toddlers and babies that were visiting. It really demonstrated her genuine interest in people and also her view of relationships really being absolutely key for future prevention.

“The Princess was really interested in their experience and really passionate about how we, at Anna Freud, we can act with working in collaboration with parents bringing together.

“She sat down and played with the little toddlers and babies that were visiting. It really demonstrated her genuine interest in people and also in her view of relationships really being absolutely key for future prevention.”

The Princess made her first visit to Anna Freud back in September 2015, before becoming the foundation’s patron the following year in support of the organisation’s focus on intervention for children and families’ mental health in early childhood.

It also comes a week after she highlighted the critical value of “consistent, nurturing relationships which create the grounded and meaningful environments around a child” in an address to the Future Workforce Summit.

“At Anna Freud we’ve been re-imagining mental health care for more than 70 years but the Princess is looking forward to the future in a rapidly changing society,” Prof McCrory told People.

“Her recent essay as well as her recent talk emphasise how we need to come together to really strengthen the bonds to help protect wellbeing and prevent mental health problems emerging in the first place.”