Foreword: The Duchess of Cambridge
My own journey on the importance of early childhood started with adults, not children...
When first undertaking royal duties a decade ago, I started meeting inspiring people who were rebuilding their lives from challenges such as addiction, homelessness, violence — and the mental ill health that often underpins these experiences. Spending time together and hearing more about their lives, I was struck by how often poor mental health but also early childhood was the focus of our conversation.
It was the recurrence of these conversations that drove me to want to learn more. And I am indebted to the academics, practitioners and, of course, parents who shared their knowledge so generously with me. Because by understanding the data, observing the practice and listening to lived experience, it became clear that if we want to build a happier and mentally healthier society then one of the best investments we can make is in the relationships, environments and experiences that make up our early childhoods.
What this report makes clear is that our first five years lay important foundations for our future selves. This period is when we first learn to manage our emotions and impulses, to care and to empathise, and thus ultimately to establish healthy relationships with ourselves and others.
It is a time when our experience of the world around us, and the way that this moulds our development, can have a lifelong impact on our future mental and physical wellbeing. Indeed, what shapes our childhood shapes the adults and the parents we become. But — and this is crucial to understand — even if we ourselves didn’t get the best start in life we can still break the cycle and develop the skills needed to raise the next generation better.
What this means is that we need to go beyond physical needs and give focus to social and emotional needs too. Nurtured children are the consequence of nurturing adults. So to invest in children means also investing in the people around them — the parents, carers, grandparents, early years workforce and more. And therefore, transforming early childhood comes back to each and every one of us. There are so many ways in which we can all support, whether as private, public and voluntary sectors, as individuals or as communities. Investing in a child is ultimately an investment in our future societal health and happiness, but to achieve this vision we need the whole of society to play its part.
In establishing The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, our mission is to drive awareness of, and action on, the transformative impact of the early years. We aim to change the way people think about early childhood — and this report is our first step. We will help to make change through fresh research to identify opportunities, collaborations to scale solutions and creative campaigns to bring this issue to life.
We will do this by continuing to listen to others and being informed by the data.
I hope this report inspires you to join this journey.
It won’t be easy — transformation never is — but big change starts small.
