After the Duchess of Cambridge’s Don’t Forget About Me Tour earlier this year, I sort of assumed that she would follow through with it and “come back” from her maternity leave pretty soon. She did not – she hasn’t done any public events since Wimbledon. The rumor is that Kate will still be on maternity leave through September, and then she’ll make a couple of appearances in October, then she’ll probably do a rush of activities to get her numbers up in November and December. So what can we expect of Kate when she does come back to a public schedule? Buttons, I would assume. But what ELSE? As it turns out, Kate is keen to focus on the children of “Broken Britain.”

The Duchess of Cambridge is launching a campaign to help children failed by ‘Broken Britain’. Kate believes the right support, from birth, can help disadvantaged youngsters reach their potential. She is bringing together experts from academia, education, health and other fields to work on how to help families tackle anti-social behaviour, addiction and mental health. The subject is politically fraught, with some blaming Broken Britain on parents and others blaming budget cuts. But sources say the 36-year-old duchess is determined to push ahead because she sees it as potentially as big an issue as climate change.

‘This is a lifelong project,’ said one royal source. ‘She is looking at what she can do over the next five, ten, 15, 20 years. She wants to be able to look back and see what difference has been made. That’s what her position in public life allows her to do.’

Researchers have highlighted the importance of early intervention and how children from disadvantaged backgrounds who do not receive the right help at school age can suffer lifelong problems. Education secretary Damian Hinds and Ofsted chief Amanda Spielman have both spoken recently of the need to help children who are not taught basic skills by their parents. If youngsters have limited vocabulary and are not toilet-trained when they start school, they are already behind their peers and many never catch up.

The duchess’s initiative, which will be launched in the new year, is a major solo move. Until now she has worked on campaigns alongside her husband William and brother-in-law Harry. By seizing on an issue she wants to campaign about for the rest of her life, she is following in the footsteps of Prince Charles’s decades-long campaign to highlight environmental issues. She insists she will steer clear of public policy, instead using her ‘convening power’ to bring together experts, charities and academics in the field under the umbrella of the Royal Foundation, the charity for the younger royals. The findings will be published by Kensington Palace next year.

[From The Daily Mail]

Don’t get me wrong, I think Kate could and should do a big issue campaign like this. I’ve thought that for some time, because she’s needed a big-issue campaign for years. But she was too busy going on holidays and getting her hair done in previous years. What concerns me is the same thing that concerns me about Heads Together: the issues of “mental health” and “early childhood education” are very important, and it’s important to have nuanced, high-level conversations about those subjects. Is Kate capable of that kind of nuance? Is William? Is Harry? Because I’m not entirely sure they are. It feels like Kate is just looking for something “soft” where she can do a lot of photo-ops with kids and have her staff ghostwrite some well-meaning letters on her behalf… which actually describes a lot of her “work” thus far on the children’s charities she already works with.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, WENN.