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This week sees the launch of our new awareness raising campaign “Shaping Us”. The campaign is fundamentally about shining a spotlight on the critical importance of early childhood and how it shapes the adults we become.

During this time, we lay the foundations and building blocks for life. It is when we learn to understand ourselves, understand others and understand the world in which we live.

This is why it is essential, to not only understand the unique important if our earlier years, but to know what we can all do to help raise future generations of happy healthy adults.

“Shaping Us” is a long-term campaign and we're starting by highlighting how we develop during early childhood, and why these years matter so much in terms of shaping who we become.

As the campaign progresses, we'll explore in more depth the importance of a child's social and emotional world, the significance of relationships and the significance of relationships and experiences a child is exposed to during these formative years.

Together, these play a key role in shaping our future lives. Yet they rarely get as much focus as our physical health and cognitive development.

And of course, by understanding our own childhoods, what has shaped our own beliefs, relationships, behaviors and feelings, we as adults a better place to play our part in positively shaping future generations.

Those involved in raising children today need the very best of information and support in helping to achieve this mission, and this campaign aims to help do that too.

I want to say a huge and heartfelt thank you to so many of you in this room for your ongoing work in this area.Thank you for the years of dedication and your unfailing determination to advocate for and improve the lives of the very youngest members of our society.

And thank you also to many of you here in this room and this evening for your personal support to me, in helping develop my thinking and work on this issue over the years.

As you all know, by building a supportive nurturing world around children and those caring for them, we can make a huge difference to generations to come. Because fundamentally, healthy happy children shape a healthy happy future.Thank you.