Oh, come off it. One of the many positive things the charity did was to organise legal representation for children and families to enforce their statutory right to local authority support. If LAs had to be ordered by courts to carry out the duties for which they received specific funding, what makes you think they would voluntarily have done any better in providing the type of support that KC organised?
Why do you think local authorities were raising their thresholds so high? Because they are meanies who don't care about children? It's because they are underfunded! Thresholds are high because we cannot do the lower risk work, and sometimes cases aren't assessed when they should be, or are closed when they shouldn't be, and in those cases legal challenge is correct. However the reason legal challenge is needed is because local authorities are under funded.
I reject the narrative that local authorities are appalling at safeguarding vulnerable children. There are failings but it is not across the board. Often it is due to under funding or other support services being cut which puts pressure on statutory services.
I am reserving judgement on kids company until more is known but I am highly suspicious. I don't believe there are hordes of abused and neglected children who kids co were protecting because children services couldn't be bothered. I'm sure they worked with children on cp plans and probably spent far more time with them than their social workers did but that's not the same as mopping up where statutory services have abandoned them.
Because they had a policy of accepting every child they probably had hundreds of chdren attending who were not being abused or neglected but who were just poor or bored at home. Those kids probably got a lot out of KC but that doesn't mean they warrant millions of public funding. There was a single dad quoted in a buzzfeed article moaning that he sends his kids there during the holidays so he can go to work and saying now he will have to sign on! Hello? How do most lone parents on a low income manage? I never had free childcare supplied by a friendly charity!
The charity may have reached a number of children who were genuinely at risk of significant harm and may have done a lot of good over the years. But providing free childcare and activities to kids who are just bored, broke urban kids is hardly what CB sells it as.
Also - with Rochdale and Oxford so recent in our history, child sexual exploitation is a HUGE issue in both statutory and voluntary sectors who work with teens and pre teens. For KC to say they have had no concerns to raise, never seen indicators of grooming or CSE in their premises is extraordinary and impossible. I acknowledge that we (all sectors) used to be woeful at identifying and acting on CSE but not any more. I struggle to forgive the idea of a charity providing wide scale interventions to young people without being aware of and acting on indicators of abuse from clients to other clients.