Kate Middleton and Prince William arrive in West Midlands for mental health visits

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The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge went head-to-head in table tennis and got up close and personal with a chameleon on an action-packed day of engagements in Wolverhampton.

Kate, 39, looked elegant in a £380 Tory Burch polka dot blouse and wide-leg trousers as she joined William, 38, at three community organisations helping children and young people with their mental health.

The first stop was The Way Youth Zone, a state-of-the-art facility that offers activities and support for young people, where Kate and William got their hands dirty planting flower pots. Sporty Kate looked in her element as she tried her hand at archery, while William couldn’t resist showing off his football skills. 

Later the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited Base25, which provides vital services like anger management courses and counselling to young people, before rounding off the day at HugglePets in the Community, which uses animal encounters to help tackle children’s mental health issues like anxiety and depression.

The Duchess of Cambridge beamed as she held a chameleon and Gus the guinea pig alongside children from a local primary school.

The engagements are all part of William and Kate’s efforts to mark Mental Health Awareness Week.  

It came as Prince Harry blasted Prince Charles’ parenting as he poured his heart out to a US mental health podcast and said he moved to California with his family to ‘break the cycle’ of ‘pain’ he suffered as a member of the Royal Family and needed to ‘change that for my own kids’.

Kate, who has made children’s mental health and childhood development the cornerstone of her royal work, looked elegant in a silk Tory Burch polka dot blouse and black wide-leg trousers.  

Typically elegant, the Duchess of Cambridge accessorised with a simple clutch bag, delicate £95 Freya Rose drop earrings, a Halcyon Days bangle and a floral face mask. She finished the outfit with a navy blue Catherine Walker coat and suede wedges. 

Dressing to match, Prince William looked smart in chinos, a shirt, jumper and blazer. 

The Duke and Duchess joined a group of young people who use The Way’s services as they took part in a number of wellbeing sessions and met a group of HeadStart ambassadors.   

The Duke and Duchess’s second visit was to Base25, a city-centre charity that has been operating for over twenty years to provide support for young people who have difficulties in accessing mainstream services. 

The charity works with approximately 9,000 young people each year and offers a range of services for children, young people and their families including counselling and a daily drop-in centre. 

During the visit, Their Royal Highnesses heard from a number of young people who use the Base25’s services about the impact of the charity’s support and met staff that deliver tailored outreach and support to the local community, including during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The final stop was HugglePets in the Community, a not-for-profit organisation founded in 2018 which uses Animal Assisted Therapy to help children with SEN disabilities or those experiencing mental health challenges engage with therapy and wellbeing activities. 

HugglePets in the Community works with over 25 different schools in the Black Country, offering Animal Assisted Intervention programmes supporting children with their mental wellbeing on topics including anxiety, low mood, confidence and resilience building and suicide awareness. 

William and Kate joined one of these sessions with a group of local school children from Loxdale Primary School, before visiting the centre’s Sensory Activity Centre and Community Aquarium. 

Tomorrow the couple will lead influential voices from around the world in the Mental Health Minute – a special message broadcast each year to over 20 million people across 500 radio stations.

The initiative, created by Radiocentre and Somethin’ Else, and delivered in partnership with The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, will support Shout 85258, the UK’s first free, confidential, 24/7 text messaging support service. 

Shout was researched and developed by The Royal Foundation as a legacy of the Heads Together campaign and launched in May 2019 by The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and The Duke and Duchess of Sussex. 

The service provides round the clock support from clinical supervisors and trained volunteers to ensure that no one has to face their problems alone.  

Meanwhile Prince Harry poured his heart out to a US mental health podcast where he admitted to hating royal life so much he wanted to quit in his ‘early 20s’ because of his mother’s death and revealed that his Meghan had concluded: ‘You don’t need to be a princess’.  

The Duke of Sussex told Dax Shepard’s ‘Armchair Expert’ show that the couple tried to stay ‘incognito’ during his wife’s first trip to stay with him in London in 2016, where he lived at Kensington Palace, texting items for their shopping list from across food aisles.

Harry also compared his life as a mixture of The Truman Show – when Jim Carrey’s character discovers his life is a TV show – and being an animal at the zoo as he discussed his mental health and listeners insisted he is developing an american twang to his British accent.

When asked if he felt ‘in a cage’ while in royal duties, he said: ‘It’s the job right? Grin and bear it. Get on with it. I was in my early twenties and I was thinking I don’t want this job, I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be doing this. Look what it did to my mum, how am I ever going to settle down and have a wife and family when I know it’s going to happen again’.

He added: ‘I’ve seen behind the curtain, I’ve seen the business model and seen how this whole thing works and I don’t want to be part of this’, before revealing he had therapy after meeting Meghan, which ‘burst’ a bubble and he decided to ‘stop complaining’.