Kate Middleton Privately Returns to Royal Duties Amid Surgery Recovery

Kate Middleton is back at work.

From home, that is. The Princess of Wales, who stepped back from royal duties after undergoing abdominal surgery in January, has been keeping tabs on a U.K. study commissioned and funded by her Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood that tested the feasibility of new baby behavior observation tool.

A Palace spokesperson said in a statement to the Telegraph newspaper March 21, “The Princess has been kept updated throughout the process.”

The 10-month study had ended with “overwhelmingly positive” findings, the Institute of Health Visiting, which conducted the trial, reported March 21. The group had researched the use of the Alarm Distress Baby Scale (ADBB) and the shorter version of the tool, the m-ADBB, to assess infants’ social behaviors during routine health visits. The health workers who took part in the study rated both training programs highly and gained “additional knowledge and skills” for explaining their observations, the results showed.