to think Camila Batmanghelidjh is fucking awesome?

[bejeezus]

I saw her talk on a news programme last night...

shes so composed and articulate, and clear-sighted and insightful and compassionate and calm and stylish and unique...

and the work she does/ what she acheives is OUTSTANDING..

heres a link to her wiki page...but it doesnt do her any justice

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camila_Batmanghelidjh

Over claiming numbers is unusual in the charity sector. Charities I am involved in have to submit evidence of numbers to funders. CB was allowed to operate without all of the usual ways of working.
So when a potential funder visited, we were able within a few minutes to give the numbers worked with that month, and what we had actually done with them. All you need is a decent database system.

And I agree with the self referral by children, but there needed to be an assessment of whether they actually did need help from Kids Company, or were simply bored and could go to other existing provision.

Exactly. I worked for a charity who had self referral policies and everyone who asked would get an assessment. Of course they rarely turned anyone away at that point because they needed the feet through the door but at least they had to evidence why the client was in need of the service and how they met the referral criteria

If she is claiming she helps 36000

fullfact.org point out that the 36 000 has been constant since 2011, even though the payroll, headcount and costs have risen substantially. So what that number means is unclear, to put it mildly.

Apologies for reposting something I said upthread the Spectator journalist reported that: "In an email to me the charity wrote: When we refer to clients they include children, young people, young adults with special needs, carers, i.e. foster parents or parents who predominantly have mental health difficulties, and school staff."

So, for every child you need to add X number of school staff plus parents/foster parents. So even conservatively that would be a ratio of say 5 carers for every child, so a total of 6,000 not 36,000 children supported. Or, it could include all school staff in every school with Kids Company-supported children, in which case it will be a fraction of 6,000 children helped. But Kids Company were obviously too special and magic to worry about dull stuff like precise figures, so we'll never know.

Obsidian, yes, thinking about it, SureStart makes everyone fill in forms on arrival and attempts to monitor outcomes in a useful way.

To answer po? No, she isn't!
She's very articulate and clever at avoiding the question but clearly the organisation isn't delivering and there is a lot of massaging of figures going on.
I'm sure much more will come out of the woodwork.

How the hell she's got away with this for so long beats me. And what were the Trustees up to not holding her to account?

I am thinking, after some back on an envelope calculations, that she has probably been spending about £4000 per child intervention. That's the same as an entire year's school per capita grant for absolutely everything in some parts of the country (in London many schools get double this). It's a LOT of money.

I agree with a lot of comments made here. One thing that my journalism days taught me was just how many charlatans manage to get into powerful positions. I met so many people who just blatant blaggers; they had no real insight into their field and were often frighteningly uninformed but just covered it up with a load of absolute bullshit. I once met a Labour Treasury SPAD who argued until he was blue in the face that JSA was double the amount it actually was.

And yes, Potemkin village seems a very apt description, Gemauve. I didn't specialise in youth issues, but my partner at the time had been an "urban BME youth" from a dysfunctional family, and thrown out at 16 to fend for himself, so I understood a lot of the obstacles people in such a situation faced and what they actually needed in order to navigate adult life and society. To my eyes, one of the most pressing issues was often that they had grown up in environments where they had been unable to acquire basic life skills and had no real awareness of how the world and society actually worked -- so they constantly misread cues, for example.

With this in mind, I didn't understand why KC was so marvelous and ground-breaking when it appeared to be little more than a badly branded youth club. At the time I first heard about KC, London was experiencing a spate of teen street murders. I seem to remember that there was something like 58 teen murders on London streets in one year alone and it was against this backdrop that KC and CB appeared, suggesting that they alone were "actively engaging" and preventing further incidents. And here again, I was bewildered. Once a young person has got to the point where they have a gun in their hands, you can't just dial that back by inviting them to a youth club painted like a primary classroom. To be crude about it, shit has gone too far. Such people need targeted and practical intervention, not a yoga class.

I suspect one of CB's draws was that she was someone who claimed to have the answers because lets be honest here no-one else did. At least, not answers that were politically acceptable. Or if they did, they just didn't shout loudly enough. The climate at the time was that "something had to be done", but no-one really knew what that was. Then along comes this person who says she will solve the problem. Joy of joys! Just bung her some cash and you can tick that off your ever growing policy fuck-up list. When someone asks you what you are doing about inner-city London youth violence and under-achievement, you can say "we fund KC, a charity that work in these areas and RESCUES THESE YOUNG KIDS FROM A LIFE OF CRIME, GODDAMN YOU. HA! EAT THAT SUCKER!" And sit back with a self-satisfied smile on your face.

This, I believe, is the sole reason why David Cameron overrode civil servant advice on KC funding. Blair and Brown would have probably done the same. KC appeared to solve an unsolvable policy problem in a very PR-friendly way.

Indeed, this was most probably the motivation for almost all the celebrity endorsements of KC -- philanthropy is a very powerful PR tool.

When it comes to her qualifications, I am somewhat puzzled as to how you graduate from a Theatre course at 21 and then do an MA in psychotherapy to end up a family therapist through a charity at 24, but maybe that is because I only know the psychology route where you have to do degree after degree, and then get a load of professional qualifications to qualify to practice.

I also don't understand how KC offered in loco-parentis facilities to youngsters under 16 without OFSTED involvement.

As a side note to pp about the Royal Family, I am led to understand that Rupert Murdoch has enough dirt on the RF to utterly destroy the Monarchy but he doesn't publish any of it out of respect to the Queen, whom he admires. When the Queen dies, however, it may be somewhat of a different story.

Camila Batmanghelidjh's and Kid Company's story always did fit into a comforting narrative that the feckless poor are always with us and the way to deal with them is to bung a load of money at a maverick charity campaigner prepared to get down with them but not spend any proper money or time or analysis sorting out problems of actual disadvantage caused by class, race, abuse, educational poverty or real poverty.

Like that link to Charles and Camilla's visit that Bore posted, we can observe them every now and them, play pool with them and smile when they are a bit cheeky and play their interesting rap music like amusing zoo exhibits.

But otherwise we should keep me and mine the fuck away from them. And definitely the hard-earned money of hard-working tax payers.

"As a side note to pp about the Royal Family, I am led to understand that Rupert Murdoch has enough dirt on the RF to utterly destroy the Monarchy but he doesn't publish any of it out of respect to the Queen, whom he admires. When the Queen dies, however, it may be somewhat of a different story."
Whereas Rupert Murdoch is a blameless individual whose honour, virtue and all round decency is quite beyond criticism.

Well said Werks
And to me her 'qualifications' were so highly suspect yet this didn't seem relevant to her appointment!
No OFSTED, no verifiable statistics and a charismatic persona and now everyone is asking questions, bit flipping late after millions of pounds have been spent one way or another.

Werks, the unfashionable answers are things like:

Tax overseas investors and UK under-occupancy on inner city housing HARD as a kind of rich persons' bedroom tax. In doing so, free up as much private sector housing as possible for families of all social groups to live nearby each other.

Build more social housing and shared ownership housing so working poor, key workers etc can live near where they work.

Make independent schools become academies, but fine them heavily for adverse selection policies, eg expensive uniforms or high exclusion levels. Most of them were originally meant to be for 'poor' kids anyway.

Universal free school meals - wasteful in some respects, but minimises children slipping through nets.

Smaller schools with a more personal atmosphere.

I realise I probably sound like the Respect party, but in fact a few of these were considered or tried last time the Tories were in power, funnily enough.

Andante ... it doesn't really matter what Murdoch is or isn't. What matters is that he, apparently, holds a bomb that would cause a British constitutional crisis, and that he alone would decide the date of detonation.

In the US serious criminal behaviour amongst young people went down. when abortion rates had risen 14 years before. Every child should be a truly wanted child.
But abortion is constantly under attack.

Btw there is an enormous amount of stuff out there in the RF and I don't doubt it will come out at some point. I meant it when I said in another thread than unless Clarence House wises up big time, their ribbon snipping days will soon be over.

In the article I linked previously CB states

Hundreds of children from babies to men and women up to the age of 30 turn up and there's no one to fund them.

Men and women up to the age of 30 certainly isn't what most of us would consider to be 'children'. Are these are counted as KC 'clients' and therefore included in the 36,000 (or whatever) figure?

I recently read an article (can't find it now) in which a woman - it wasn't clear how old she was - said she'd been using KC for 15 years and still had weekly contact with her keyworker. She said she didn't know how she was going to cope without this support.

Um

If someone has to be supported for 15 years, wouldn't that suggest an unhealthy dependency? And a failure of the intervention?

That's certainly what it suggested to me, although I have no qualifications/experience in related areas (am beginning to think that I am, nevertheless, more qualified than CB).

I wonder how many of the KC staff actually were appropriately qualified?

Or Boffin to hang on like grim death to all referrals in order to keep the numbers up?
The whole setup seems more and more suspect, with apparently a maverick attitude and no one prepared to ask questions.

This very interesting link has just been posted on the other CB thread.

BoffinMum ... yes, as I said, there were no politically acceptable answers.

I mean, look at the squeals about the mansion tax. Crikey, even certain Labour stalwarts started fussing about that when they realised it would apply to their homes. Again, there is some suggestion that the state is now dependent on foreign investment in British housing to keep the balance of payments balanced. I notice that one way the Government is attempting to tackle the issue of overseas investment in British housing is through the "criminality" route, which is a way of sidestepping concern from foreign representatives.

Until the issue of foreign money pouring into the London property market is solved, I can't really see how you can increase the amount of cheap housing in London -- land is just too expensive because there is so much money chasing it. Personally, I think a lot could be done with council tax if there were more higher bands, so that "annual property taxes" in London were equivalent to, say, annual property taxes in New York. It is fucking ridiculous that annual council tax on a £18 million property in Southwark is less than £2.5K a year.

If someone has to be supported for 15 years, wouldn't that suggest an unhealthy dependency? And a failure of the intervention?

Yup, the whole point of working in this area is you get in a YP, record their starting point and needs, and then exit them ideally with a positive outcome. There is absolutely no point in taking on a YP when you are not improving any outcome ever, and there has to be an end point where they exit, possibly to further provision with another org if they need further help but have gone past the age limit.

I have a horrible feeling part of the 36,000 number thing is the whole "no child is ever.turned away" ethos. So all these kids self refer and get added to the numbers "helped". But if there is no exit procedure then the numbers will grow every year as every YP they have ever come into contact with will still be on the system.

But ItsAllGoingToBeFine, the number 36 000 was constant over three years. With your interpretation, it would mean no additional children being served at all. With a more charitable interpretation with a sensible exit strategy it would mean constant numbers of children being served, which would make the increasing headcount and budgets hard to explain. It's all most... odd.

I have a horrible feeling part of the 36,000 number thing is the whole "no child is ever.turned away" ethos. So all these kids self refer and get added to the numbers "helped". But if there is no exit procedure then the numbers will grow every year as every YP they have ever come into contact with will still be on the system.

Is this maybe what KC and its supporters meant when they said KC was a family? That there never was an exit point? That KC was there to function as a "surrogate parent" for the rest of your life?

This would weirdly make sense in light of some of the revelations, and actions and comments made by KC workers and CB: the idea that the envelopes were "pocket money", like the pocket money middle class parents gave their children every week, the funding of the right kind of trainers, the buying of a van for a 26-year-old.