Can we talk about Camilla Batmanghedjh?

Glad I did a sneaky unhide to see that post, almond. Yes to your second paragraph.

I don't think it is about vilifying her. I don't think most discussion is about her at all; it is about the organisation.

It is about what has happened within that organisation, how it got funding and why. That mostly isn't about her; it is about the failings of the Government in thinking through service provision and the Big Society, how safeguarding goes wrong and so on and what has gone wrong there.

I think the point about curing with their wonderfulness is spot on and why the EP/CB comparisons are being made. - Me too.

I'm just not interested in vilifying people for being less wonderful than they think. I tend to save that for folks who deliberately cause harm. I also don't like throwing babies out with bathwater, which is likely to happen if all of CB's work is belittled in consequence of her fall from grace. She shouldn't have been 'in grace' to start with.

So I won't be on the other thread, and I'll be hiding this one.

Hmm. Think I need to go and read the other thread. I got put off before because it seemed v reactionary and not very informed but it sounds like it's moved on now.

And yes the BBC article is shocking, I hadn't appreciated she was saying things like that. And what SGB says about safeguarding these children from each other is really important and I think the point about curing with their wonderfulness is spot on and why the EP/CB comparisons are being made.

I'm really amazed that the only people on MN defending what Kids' Company have done are the feminist section.

We have reports on the other thread from people with experience of the place saying how badly run it was, how children were at risk from each other, how girls who made complaints about harassment and threats from boys on the premises were called slags by the staff and a link to the person who set up the organisation telling a parliamentary committee the following about black women:

Ms Batmanghelidjh told the MPs: "I actually think the mothers are hugely responsible because they have created a culture where they can get rid of the adolescent boy."

"They can get rid of the male partner, they can survive on their own.

"Often people think it's the males who are the culprits, the irresponsible people who actually come along and make these girls pregnant and walk off.

"And they underestimate the level of rejection and cruelty from the females towards the males."

All I can say in response to this thread is WTF? Why on earth are feminists defending lack of basic safeguarding of young people, including young girls? Organisations like this that don't protect women and girls are exactly the sort of thing I would expect FWR to be glad were being exposed.

I appreciate completely that some (if not most) of the children who attend/attended Kids Company are difficult/violent/unappealing in many ways, and I certainly don't think they should be written off or just locked up. But for all this hippy woo bollocks unconditional love and aromatherapy how the fuck are they keeping their attendees safe from EACH OTHER?

Both Camilla B and Erin P self-represented as being able to calm and cure traumatized, aggressive, acting-out teenagers with the magical power of their wonderfulness but, even if there were some truth in that (some people do have a real knack for being able to calm aggression) the sheer scale of numbers claimed to be passing through the organisation means there have to be other procedures in place to deal with a kid wielding a knife or hurling the furniture around for the sake of the other kids.

I'm not here to defend complementary therapies, except as part of emotional/psychological development. And I do defend them for that. I just thought it worth mentioning the 'crystals in the toes' thing is real - I don't happen to go with the rest of reflexology's claims but, hey. A lot of ailments are provoked by stress; do what works, etc.

Apologies if this has already been posted but I found this link news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6080096.stm on the other thread really interesting. In case link doesn't work it's CB on record making claims about single black mother being at fault for many problems experienced by young men.

There really really isn't anything in reflexology. It definitely isn't a treatment for gout either. It's a nice foot rub.

There is something in reflexology, btw. It's true that uric acid can build up in the feet (gout).

Yeah, well, the practitioners believe all that stuff In my experience, folks respond a lot better to pseudo-scientific theories of holistic health than "Well, you seem a bit fucked up. Let's try introducing you to non-threatening physical touch, shall we?"

I spend a bloody fortune on massages during my first couple of years with therapy. I knew what I was doing, but the practitioners would have run a mile if I'd told them I needed a human to apply soothing touches all over my body So I repeated the appropriate justifications!

If they are that effective why do they need dressing up in a pile of pseudoscience? If they work (not saying they don't) it should be perfectly possible just to say so in simple words with simple evidence, a bit like you have.

Instead it's dressed up with crap about lymphatics, waste products, universal healing and ancient meridians.

Touch-based therapies are really helpful in re-establishing emotional balance, Kundry. Think about a child whose only experience of an adult's touch is being hit or manhandled. Think about a person of any age, who's learned not to have any feelings. Think what it's like when your main source of pride is your ability to withstand pain.

Really? It was those pages, especially the comp therapies pages that made me think that charity was a big pile of expensive woo bollocks (in SGB's immortal phrase)

Yes massage can help the lymphatic system. That's only of benefit if you have a disorder of your lymphatic system which 99.999% of children do not.

A quick google of Emotional Focussed Therapy was also interesting. There is an Emotionally Focussed Therapy which appears to be a legitimate form of therapy but has no link to acupressure or acupuncture which they appear to be linking to what they do. However if you google it with acupressure you discover Emotional Freedom Techniques which is based on acupuncture and unsurprisingly has no evidence and is a stinking pile of woo. FWIW there are no meridians, no physical and emotional blockages and no evidence for acupuncture beyond placebo at all. If this is all the psychotherapy they do, they shouldn't bother.

And reflexology? Really???

The Child Poverty Busting Programme also appeared to be nothing of the sort. First it quotes the much debated 36000 children. It then seems to be a programme for giving people stuff. Now clearly giving someone who hasn't got a bed, a bed, is a good thing and should be applauded but it isn't poverty busting by any measure. You are still poor, just now you have a bed. It's overselling what it is.

How it came to employ so many people becomes clear as the place is a quack therapist's paradise.

The one I am reading is called "I can't calm down I want to beat the hell out of you".

The transcripts at the bottom of that link are very eye opening as well. Nice resource!

You could have a look at their job therapy page, Lass, and follow the links if you're interested. The pages on play, psychotherapy and complementary therapies also make good sense to me :)

lass I agree that some record keeping is needed, but I'm not sure how we measure acheivement. Do we say 'still alive' as a pp said? Do we say 'not in prison at 18?'. Do we say, 'hasn't joined IS yet?'.

I do know that among other things KC funds PHDs studying how to break the cycle that leaves these kids where they are. To me that seems very valuable.

And I'm not against the providing of hot meals, be they literal ones or partly figurative in the sense of knowing that there is someone/somewhere there for you. I am happy for the provision of hot meals for those to need them to be funded by the government or by the rich should they chose to donate. So I wouldn't personally necessarily go 'well it's just some hot meals' as an example of failure.

But there has to come a point where "attempting to do something about it" isn't good enough if the attempts aren't achieving anything.

KC is being asked to quantify in some way what it does. Nothing seems very clear beyond some of their clients get a hot meal.

I went away and Buffy came back. Buffy now if you leave again I'll think it's my fault, so please don't.

Glad to see a thread about this, though missed the chat one. And I don't have enough to add, really. I expect there is bullshit on both sides - I've heard that organisationally, management of KC is maybe not brilliant, but I've also got, as others have said, an enormous amount of respect for anyone who's trying to help. What makes someone kickass at running this sort of charity might not make them kickass at running it in a hyper-organised, entirely evenhanded and non-enemy-making way, and I doubt CB is the only charity head in that position.

It gets on my tits the way certain Naice Friends of mine are facebook statusing the shit out of it, as though it's The Greatest Human Rights Wrong Ever Committed - but that's my prejudice. After all, they don't give a shit about tower hamlets most of the time, so even if they seem to think that it's more important that CB is seen as a saint than the charity is run absolutely as well as it could be, at least they're involved in some way. And who's to say she's not just doing the best she can, even if that is flawed.

That all said, if I can smugly posit a conspiracy theory just in case I'm right... outside odds on this being in some way related to the whole Lutfur Rahman debacle?

YYYYY, Bertie. I did get what you meant about class/environment/normality, too. For a while I lived on a massive complex of flats in London's East End - walking through was really upsetting, because of the incessant high-decibel shouting and crying :(

Both Pizzey and Batmanghelidjh talk about the therapeutic value of unconditional love. I can see why this looks weird & freaky to 'normal' people who have experienced unconditional love. But I never have! None of the people in any of my groups have. Children are wired to be loved unconditionally and, when this isn't forthcoming, we go on to seek it inappropriately in later life. Instead of learning emotional security, we learn to fight for love, to earn it or steal it, or to reject it as a sham. Since this is a huge topic at the very root of all psychology, there's little sense in going on about it too much here. But, because it's such a massive thing, few people have the moral courage to address it. EP & CB had the courage and conviction to attempt this: giving more love; imposing fewer conditions.

People don't like women with exceptional self-belief. Societies are uncomfortable with being asked to love shouting, fighting, thieving & rejecting people. Systems don't like anything with few conditions. Pioneers are always vilified.

Again, I'm not canonizing either woman. And I'm not devaluing them.

(In case anyone wants to know: I had some great therapists who modelled unconditional love for me, and who helped me learn to do it for myself :) )

Yes, I didn't mean to lump anybody in with "inarticulate lower classes" - the point is that it does cross classes but how open it is tends to differ. At least in my experience. On the "deprived estate" next to where I used to live I made friends with one young woman who in one breath described how her ex had held her up against the wall by her throat (after they'd split, just in a general argument) and in the next mentioned that she was looking forward to the weekend when he would have her son for contact and she'd get some time off. Later that day as we walked to a different children's centre they commented negatively about a woman who walked past with a string of eight or nine children, she had an obvious black eye and they attributed it to her partner. I wasn't really clear whether they were judging her or judging him at the time. (They knew her.) The children would act out violence at playgroup quite freely. It was different from the middle class playgroups which I had also attended, although violence of course happens in every class, it just comes out differently. But it's generally really difficult for anybody entrenched in one lifestyle to really imagine what it is like to be a part of the other. I just observed snapshots, really, I haven't lived it.

And yes - actually, I do think it's entirely relevant that the general public and many organisations don't really understand the mechanics of how a child ends up being SO disordered that they are violent, aggressive, oppositional, they steal, they take drugs, they have sex very very young. It's not simply about a "naughty" child, their needs are extremely complex. Whether KC is meeting them, I don't know. Certainly the point about them being self referrals and hence not really meeting the needs of who they need to meet is key for me. But on the other thread, one of the first posts was a typical judging one, talking about teenagers with knives and fighting being given brand new trainers and gadgets. That is so simplistic, I don't even know where to begin. But certainly when dealing with kids with the kind of issues that KC hopes to help, they aren't going to be sitting around quietly minding their own business and getting on with homework or whatever in these clubs. If you write them off for their erratic behaviour, then what happens to them? They do get written off, cut off, kicked out, excluded, from homes, from schools, from foster placements, I know that they are difficult to deal with, but you're just shoving them further and further away. It's the age old question of how early do you need to intervene, at which point is it "too late" and what do you do with the ones for whom it's already too late? Mostly the boys end up in prison, but not for very long, and the girls end up with a string of removed children, creating more messed up lives.

TBH, it is such a mountainous and messy task that I totally take my hat off to anybody who is attempting to do anything about it, and I don't really care how efficient they are, because it's perfectly clear that the most efficient system in the world wouldn't be able to handle the demand anyway. If anybody has a better solution, then I'm interested.