The Princess of Wales showed a deeply compassionate and hands-on side during a royal visit to Bradford, gently showing a young girl how to listen to the sea through a shell while spending time with children receiving trauma therapy.
Kate visited Family Action’s Children’s Trauma Therapy Service, where she met therapists and families supported by the charity, which helps children and parents recover from complex trauma.
During her time at the centre, she joined creative therapy sessions and spoke with children taking part in activities designed to help them express difficult emotions through play.
She took part in sessions involving collage trees and wish boxes, learning how non-verbal, play-based approaches are used as tools for healing. The visit formed part of a wider day of engagements across the North of England, focused on highlighting the role of creativity, community and nature in supporting those affected by trauma, isolation and mental health struggles.
The princess has long been an advocate for mental health awareness and has previously spoken about how nature helped her "heal" following cancer treatment, most recently in a video series released on her 44th birthday.
Her tour of the North also included a visit to Wakefield Trinity’s rugby league ground, where she praised the club’s deep-rooted support for its local community. At the venue, she met schoolgirls training in rugby, pensioners attending a social quiz, and teenagers considered at risk of school exclusion.
As patron of the Rugby Football League, Kate arrived dressed in a smart jacket and trousers, which meant she watched rather than joined in with rugby drills. Instead, she chatted with the girls during a break in their skills session for Wakefield’s Champion Schools competition.
While standing pitchside in freezing conditions, she was asked about Princess Charlotte’s sporting interests and replied: "She does loads of sport but not rugby."
She also joked about the physical nature of the game, saying: "There's not any other sport when you can say contact is a good thing."
Kate later sat with Wakefield supporters aged between their 60s and 90s who regularly attend In Touch events run by Wakefield Trinity’s Community Foundation. The sessions aim to reduce loneliness among older people.
She told them: "I love this, the league game is so embedded in community life and it's so grassroots (and) interaction, and getting youngsters involved but also how clubs like this connect to the rest of the community.
"They're absolute gold dust really, and I'm so proud to help support the league across the country."
During the visit she was presented with a Wakefield Trinity shirt, prompting club captain and England player Mike McMeeken to joke: "Now she has a Wakefield Trinity shirt she is an honorary member of the club!"
After Wakefield, Kate tied her hair back in a plait, put on a newsboy-style cap, and joined a guided walk in the hills with Mind Over Mountains, a charity that provides professional mental health support through therapeutic outdoor experiences.
The walk concluded a day that began at Family Action, a charity of which Kate is a patron. The organisation offers practical, emotional and financial support to families facing poverty, disadvantage and isolation across the UK. Its Bradford-based children’s trauma therapy service works with young people affected by abuse, neglect and traumatic bereavement.
Speaking to staff, Kate said: "It's probably been a lifeline for them in so many ways and being able to extend that umbilical cord support - the fact that you're able to continue that relationship with them."
She joined a therapy session with a mother and her 12-year-old son, who had been colouring leaves for a collage tree to help explore emotions and reflect on his therapy journey. The boy explained how music had helped him cope and that he now played drums in a band.
Kate responded: "That's a fantastic way to sort of express yourself and also manage really difficult and hard feelings that are sometimes harder to express with words than in any other way."
She asked whether he had ever imagined playing in a band. He replied: "No. If you said it to me three years ago, I wouldn't have believed you because I wouldn't have thought I had the attention span for it."
Kate also spent time with a mother and her five-year-old daughter as they decorated a wish box filled with items used to express emotions. The princess crouched down, held the girl’s hand and complimented her outfit, saying: "I like your dress. That's a pretty dress and your shoes, I have boots like that but they don't have glitter on sadly. Are they your favourite boots?"
Inside the box was a small jar of glitter and water, which the girl described as her "potion". Asked what it did, she said it "keeps away the bad dreams". Kate told the girl’s mother that "lots of people need more of these".
The box also contained a feather, which the therapist explained was meant to keep her "busy head" "nice and calm", along with two shells. Kate told the girl: "Sometimes when you put it to your ear, you can hear waves. That's what I like doing with shells."
She gently asked: "Have you enjoyed coming here to do these things with mummy? What have you enjoyed about it?
"Is it being able to play together? And talk about some of the things that you find difficult?"
Later, the girl’s mother joked: "I think she was more excited about seeing Esther [her therapist]."
Senior therapist Stuart Murray-Borbjerg said of the princess: "She seemed genuinely interested to hear about the family's experience of the service and the impact of it."
He also explained the importance of creative, non-verbal therapy approaches, saying they help children express emotions when words are not enough. He added: "Something that's lost through traumatic experiences is that sense of playfulness and joy which just comes back when you're making music or you're drawing together.
"[It's] something the princess said too – that kind of gets lost as adults but George keeps her playful. I think she said one [of her children] plays the guitar and one plays the drums."