Can we talk about Camilla Batmanghedjh?

She is not 'getting crucified': she was, however, getting sanctified till last week, and appeared v much (certainly when I've been at events where she's been receiving awards) to be revelling in her sainthood. You'd be hard-pressed to find any open criticism of her whatsoever before that point.

CB has had a free hand for almost 20 years so I'm not hugely inclined to accept it's the big nasty government stifling her ideas.

I had wondered a while ago what Kids' Company did and it all seemed very nebulous. Carol made some good points.

I'm not convinced the fact some local authorities refer children to them is proof they are any good.

But if people are running a charity that's not just financially incompetent but might be doing the opposite of helping the people it's supposed to help, then there should be an investigation in to what's going on. If the megastar founder's response to questions is to shriek and howl about persecution, and the only answers available are from the founder and the founder's friends and focus on the wonderfulness and specialness of the founder and how the founder's magic powers will make everything all right somehow then that's not good.
If (for example) the 'unconditional love' approach of Kids' Company means that these troubled kids are kicking the shit out of each other due to poor supervision and a rejection of 'authoritarianism' then a lot of needy kids will not attend because they are scared of the violence.

Sigh. There are some very cohesive arguments on the other thread.

Why did you start this thread OP?

Buffy I agree there needs a to be a balance found between accountability and control but for some charities accountability is easier than others isn't it? And perhaps that's where KC had trouble ( for the little I know about it) For example a charity based on sexual health, is easier to quantify than one focusing on children poverty l.

Buffy

That may be true, but may not. Even if the charity has not achieved what the government wanted/measured, surely it should be able to show how it has used the money and how it has helped kids. This is necessary when spending our money. The annual report states:

Measuring the true impact of Kids Company’s intervention is not possible. Society has not developed evidencing tools which capture the potency of hope, the rekindling of imagination and returning children to dignity. So we are left with some inadequate measures which at best describe our output
and capture aspects of our outcomes.

There then follows some outcomes for 750 children - not a great number for a charity spending £20m a year.

So, even after 18 years, they have no idea if what they do makes any difference or whether the outcomes could be delivered better or more cheaply.

I agree about Bob Geldof, SGB.

It is incredibly sad that there is so much corruption and incompetence in the voluntary sector.

I don't think this is even that unusual a situation - multiple staff (the ones who actually work with the clients) leaving due to incompetent management and not being listened to when they point out the problems.

Accurate records are how clients and workers can hold organisations accountable for how they have been treated.

A lot of this would be prevented if there was better Union representation, unions getting support in not letting managers be in the same Union as their workers (something managers frequently try to undermine) and better whistle blowing policies.

It reminds me of the issue with section 28 still existing in academy policies because policy writing had been outsourced once the LEA was not providing that service to academies.

Cameron's insistence on dismantling the public sector in favour of 'local' power and the voluntary sector was a recipie for diversifying corruption and incompetence. Ethical voluntary sector organisations pointed out the problems from the start.

Yes Buffy, that makes perfect sense.
She has fallen from grace and she and the children can be filed away under the heading: 'undeserving'. Part of the whole strivers and shirkers debate I guess.
Would it be conspiracy thinking that this happens at the same time as redefining child poverty?

No academic papers for me, Meh, but an overwhelming frustration with what I've been calling management by spreadsheet! Suddenly I have the exact explanation & language required :)

Buffy, hats off for making Foucault make sense.

Suddenly a lot of waffle in an academic paper I read ages ago (and which has bugged me ever since) falls neatly into place.

As someone working in charity, and desperately trying to obtain grant funding for much needed services, I find this whole thing depressing. CB was clearly exploiting her relationships with government (which is her privilege and even her right) but this only makes things harder for new, unknown charities to get established. And I'm sorry but there has to be accountability when it comes to public money - she can't expect special treatment.

Kids Company deals with the most distressed; the most abused and confused. A huge amount of what it does is ongoing therapeutic work, both as 'therapy' and in providing a sane, balanced, supportive environment. That is staggeringly expensive - compare it, for example, with The Priory where confused rich kids get the same level of care.

Local authorities and the NHS refer children to Kids Company when the kind of highly structured and cost-accountable support they can provide is insufficient. I think that says a great deal about the quality of its services.

I said on the other thread that something about her puts me in mind of Erin Pizzey (but I realise quite a few people wouldn't know who EP is): charismatic, noisy, good at raising awareness but massively self-aggrandizing and inclined to seek flattery and admiration and believe in own super-powers.

Another comparison might be with Bob Geldof, whose charity work was also well-intentioned but didn't end up doing much good - and who also became percieved as a bullying ego-tripper.

It's starting to look as though Kids' Company, for all the noise and attention, hasn't actually been doing much good at all: trying to treat alienated, struggling, possibly-having-MH issues teenagers with magic beans and aromatherapy and 'love' was unlikely to work very well for very many, and if the supposed 'safe space' is full of them duffing one another up then it may not be that safe or therapeutic.

What a fantastic post, Buffy. Thank you for explaining so well.

To feed 3,000 people a week, you would have to write up plans to order food and cook the right quantities at the right time on the right day

So it cannot be a massively complex task for that charity to give a breakdown of how, in a sixty seat dining area, they are feeding that many people in a week, what they are feeding them and when. They must already know this information!

It is either outright fraud or the whole thing is an utter shambles.

And they should give that woman her money back.

My motive is to offer another way of thinking about what's going on with all this, and to ask people to wonder who is actually benefiting from what's happening to this charity and whether they think what's going on is really OK

Well one of the questions being asked was "who is benefitting from this charity?". And one of the answers was "36,000 people per annum " . A figure arrived at by methodology which has been challenged.

One of the issues raised by the donor alleged to have mental health issues is that it would be physically impossible to have spent the sum in the way claimed.

So as to who is benefitting from what is happening, well depending on your starting point - no-one if you think there is no case to answer or all users of its services, donors and tax payers if there is.

One of her claims, if the Spectator article is accurate, that a proportion of her donation could not possibly have been spent in the the charity claimed.

Even if she has mental health issues a simple "I do not agree with Mrs x's interpretation of the facts" would have sufficed on national media.

Who knows, Mrs x may have mental health issues and still be correctly interpreting the situation.

In any case the issues raised by this woman are not the only ones.

The thing is, if it boils down to how well the money us being spent then any head of any organisation demanding funding from the government has to justify their demands. Nothing to do with that persons sex.

If someone is hungry and needs feeding, is it better to give them £10 and directions to Nandos, or is it better to spend that £10 on a days worth of healthy and nutritious meals.

Not following your "she said comment"

The woman who sold her house is the woman CB has been talking about in the last few days as having mental health issues. Which seems irrelevant to the points being raised.