The Queen Consort has hailed the "totally incredible" work of a hospital-based domestic abuse team and called for others to follow its lead.
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On her first official solo engagement in her new role, Her Majesty was visiting the maternity unit at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, which acts as a key hub for women experiencing domestic abuse.
WATCH: Queen Consort Camilla visits Chelsea and Westminster Hospital
After meeting staff, experts and volunteers working together across different departments to help identify and support survivors, she told them: "I had no idea how it all worked, it's totally incredible. I'm so thrilled to have come."
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The hospital's Domestic Abuse model sees staff works in close partnership with the specialist agencies Standing Together, Victim Support and Galop. The aim is to provide any survivor coming through the hospital with confidential help, advice, and specialist advocacy to keep them and any dependants safe.
The service also offers users support with finances, housing and legal issues. In the Josephine Barnes ward, she met Dr Charlotte Cohen, the Trust's Domestic Abuse Lead, who began to set up the system in 2007.
The Queen Consort at the maternity unit at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital
"I'm fascinated to know what you have been doing here," said Camilla. She was introduced to Vicki Cochrane, Divisional Director of Nursing and Midwifery, telling her: "Thank you very much for the work you are doing." Vicki explained: "It's the first hospital that I have heard of that’s doing this pioneering work."
The Queen Consort then meet a group of Independent Domestic Violence Advisors, including Susan Casey, Danielle Salloum and Aisha Foster from Victim Support and Matthew Walters from the LGBTQ+ anti-abuse charity Galop, who told her how he was finding survivors of abuse during routine sexual health clinics.
Jessica Whittock, the Trust's Domestic Abuse Coordinator explained how staff and volunteers are specially trained to recognise survivors. Chelsea and Westminster has 300 Domestic Abuse "links" - staff from various departments who have completed day-long specialist training and who wear red lightbulb badges to mark themselves out to colleagues.
Sarah Green, a consultant midwife for public health and safeguarding, told the royal visitor how midwives have to ensure that mothers and babies are safe to return home and are offered safe spaces to disclose abuse during their antenatal care.
The issue is also confidentially raised with expectant mothers during every trimester of pregnancy. "You have to get people to talk about it," nodded Camilla.
The royal met with hospital staff on Thursday
There was laughter as the Queen Consort recognised Isabelle Boyer, Chair of Trustees at the charity Safe Lives, of which she is patron.
Isabelle was there in her role as an infant feeding volunteer at the hospital and explained how she was able to pick up on signs of abuse while spending time with new parents.
In another ward, Camilla was introduced to staff from the emergency department, children’s services, legal services, the burns unit and the nursing team.
"It's so nice to see everyone working together," she told them. She then went into a private room to meet women who have used the service, spending longer than planned listening to their stories.
Her Majesty, who has been the patron of Safe Lives since 2020, then headed to the hospital's indoor garden to meet the charity's CEO Suzanne Jacob, and one of its "Pioneer" Trustees, Shana Begum, along with other staff and agency partners.
Camilla cooed over Shana's three-week-old son Jeremy, who was born at the St Helens and Knowsley hospital in Merseyside. She asked Shana: "Does he always sleep this well?"
"Not at night!" she replied, as the royal visitor stroked her son's tiny head. Told she had three older children aged 18, nine and seven, the Her Majesty asked: "Four?! Is he your last? Life has changed and you have got him to prove it."
This was her first official solo engagement in her new role
"It's so wonderful when you see people coming back into the system to help others. What a journey." Shana 38, survived 25 years of domestic violence. She grew up amid domestic abuse and was forced into marriage aged 17, later fleeing while pregnant with her first child.
Her father attempted to take her life in an act of honour-based violence and she later found herself in another abusive marriage, but managed to leave with her three eldest children in 2018.
She now works to raise awareness of domestic abuse and to support other survivors. As they chatted over a cup of tea, the Queen Consort said of Jeremy, "He has had an adventure." And as he started to grumble, she said: “Oh dear. That’s when the face gets all scrunched.
"Baby Jeremy, you are going to be a bit of a star. First photographs at a very early age, only three weeks old!” She told Shana: "You are doing a wonderful job. It's very important to have people like you." As little Jeremy began to squeal, she said, consolingly, "It's all too much. It's a big moment for him with cameras and people all over the place.”
Her Majesty, in a navy dress with white top stitching by Anna Valentine, appeared to have a bandaged right foot. Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the injury.
Her Majesty also spoke to Nicole Jacobs, Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, along with other team members and agency partners.
She said of the hospital's approach to domestic abuse: "I can see what a huge support system there is. "Just seeing how it works here, it's about getting everyone together."
Speaking afterwards, Suzanne said of the Queen Consort's visit: "It's an extraordinary sign of her commitment and it will mean a huge amount to survivors and people who are still in abusive relationships up and down the country and all over the world.
"Making that choice is an extraordinary vote of confidence in those individuals – to know that somebody with her kind of profile and platform has made it such a priority."
Suzanne said that she was inundated with messages from survivors after every royal engagement with the charity, saying: "There is always a wave of people contacting us to say how important it was to them. It shows the importance of their story and experience, when they've constantly been told by a perpetrator that nobody will believe them and nobody will help them.
"The Queen Consort counteracting that is hugely helpful."
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