The first five years of a child's life are the most crucial – so why do we consistently underestimate their importance?

The Princess of Wales is in a church hall in Southwark, happily drinking a make-believe cup of tea offered to her by a toddler. The little boy, George, neither knows nor cares who she is, other than a new playmate who shows suitable appreciation for his imaginary brew.

The Princess is in her element – the children around her, oblivious. If it wasn’t for the part-nervous, part-incredulous glances from a room full of mothers and staff, she could almost be an ordinary volunteer.

An hour or so later, she leaves with sticky fingers from making fruit kebabs and a head full of information gathered directly from those on the front line of a sector that has never felt so essential. The visit, one of countless public and private trips over the last few years, was designed to shine a spotlight on the “early years”, the period from birth to five years old, that experts now agree is utterly critical to building happy, healthy adults.

After more than a decade in the Royal family, and as she embarks on a new era as Princess of Wales, the future Queen, who started life in the public eye as Kate Middleton, has pledged to do everything she can to change the fortunes of generations to come.

Ambitious? Yes. But possible? Experts think so.

The problems facing the early years sector are vast, from a looming childcare crisis to the huge repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic on our youngest generation. At nurseries, community centres, hospitals, research departments, charities, schools, homes, and in her own newly set up Centre for Early Childhood, the Princess has spent years quietly consolidating evidence of what needs to be done.

As she has worked, The Telegraph has been alongside her: watching, listening and interviewing those she has consulted. Now, as the public hears directly from the Princess in her clearest terms yet about her passionate commitment to the “youngest members of society”, there is no doubt about her conclusion: the under-fives need our attention like never before.

At the Angel Nursery, set in the middle of grey blocks of flats in a deprived area of Pimlico, a three-year-old is tickling the nursery’s chief executive under her chin with a feather and laughing like a drain. June O’Sullivan MBE, who runs 40 nurseries under the banner of the London Early Years Foundation (LEYF) – three-quarters of them in disadvantaged areas – takes her chance to teach the little girl as she plays along, sounding out the word “feather”, and giving a description of its colour and texture.

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