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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to think Camila Batmanghelidjh is fucking awesome?

448 replies

bejeezus · 04/07/2012 10:50

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

OP posts:
LuluJakey1 · 08/08/2015 17:07

As someone who works with teenagers, the biggest issue in seriously disaffected teenagers lives is long term inadequate parenting.

I am not talking about teenagers who go through teenage angst and typical challenging behaviour at times. They respond to boundaries because they are used to them. They have parents who lve and support them- however well off or not they are financially.

I am talking about teenagers who have had years of awful parenting - emotional and physical neglect, addictions, no boundaries, little time spent with them, not enough love and stability, families not built on a set of shared decent values- work and education is important , take responsibility, kindness and respect to everyone, affection, giving something back, no violence, cleanliness, encouragement, taking care of what you have, honesty matters etc. These are the things that build resilience in children.

As children come to us at 11 we can see which ones are going to struggle with life because they just can not cope. Very little makes a difference by then.

As a society we are scared to speak up about this and tell these parents they are getting it really wrong and to intervene. Instead we mollycoddle them with support workers, benefits, people who do things for them, we make excuses for them, give them what they won't provide. There are billions thrown at compensating for and supporting people who are rubbish parents and inadequate members of society and who don't bother to do the right things as parents. CB has made a living from doing it. She is wealthy from it.

It becomes self- perpetuating, the children go on to be awful parents and keep the pattern going.

IPityThePontipines · 08/08/2015 18:02

Lulu - to an extent I agree. The "Team around the family" approach can often completely overshadow what is happening and allow the parents needs to overule the rights of the child, as has been shown in many, many Serious Case Reviews.

But.

Our care system for children who are removed the families isn't so great either (to put it mildly). And with the ever encroaching, increasingly unaccountable private sector.

The rise and fall of CB and KC is a fascinating story, this is such an interesting thread, but there really does need to be a wider discussion about service provision and monitoring.

DodgedAnAsbo · 08/08/2015 18:14

I have no idea if she is a good person or a scam artist, but I do know that the jimmy saville episode taught me that lionising and fawning to charismatic people can be very dangerous.
They need to be scrutinised the same as every ordinary person

ObsidianBlackbirdMcNight · 08/08/2015 18:20

The charity counts foster carers in their figures of people supported? Although all foster carers have a supervising social worker and team or agency supporting them already, which is funded by local authority fostering budgets?
Are we paying to support them twice?

DodgedAnAsbo · 08/08/2015 18:23

just saw a placard saying 'kids club is are family'

don't know where all the money went, but it wasn't on literacy

FatherReboolaConundrum · 08/08/2015 18:35

School staff, too Obs.

CalmYoBadSelf · 08/08/2015 19:18

I think I read somewhere that of the 36,000 children helped around 8,000 were classmates of the young person helped as they were deemed to have also benefitted from the intervention

Nonnainglese · 08/08/2015 19:20

KC had a £25.5m budget for this financial year (figs in Daily Telegraph)
That's beenwasted spent in 4 months by the end of which a further £3m was given.
So what the hell's going on? That's our money ffs

FiveGoMadInDorset · 08/08/2015 19:29

The Times article today stated that in 2013 £15million of their £23 million budget went on staffing costs.

fishboneschokus · 08/08/2015 19:31

Calm,
I read in the comments under the Spectator piece that if one kid came once a week that they counted that as 30 kids helped because the rest of the class benefited

SolidGoldBrass · 08/08/2015 19:38

TBH what's going to come out is probably going to be even worse. I have a friend who works with vulnerable children in a deprived area, and she said that social services and schools found KC very worrying: inappropriate closeness and lack of boundaries, and convincing children that any support other than that offered by KC was bad and the state was their enemy.

I will not be remotely surprised if it turns out that some of the overpaid staff would have been grooming and abusing the children. All charity work with the vulnerable attracts egotistical predators, and KC's chaotic 'unconditional love' cult-like approach would have made it an absolute magnet for Savile-types. Probably the only safeguard against them would have been if CB decided they were too charming and therefore attracting the affection and admiration away from her...

BoffinMum · 08/08/2015 22:03

Fuck, SolidGoldBrass, I hope you're wrong, I really do.

BoffinMum · 08/08/2015 22:09

From what I am reading here, it sounds like she couldn't set up the orphanage she claims she wanted to, so she undermined the structure of the family to entice children into her world that way, like some kind of charitable Pied Piper. They all seem to disappear under her dress and never come out again. In a warped way that makes sense.

Nonnainglese · 08/08/2015 22:12

I hope you're wrong too but I've had misgivings for sometime, it just seemed all too good to be true, as if she was a fairy godmother or something..... how did it cost £800,000 for 160 staff? £50,000 per head?

SolidGoldBrass · 08/08/2015 22:36

There's a guff-laden piece here by someone who worked there - apparently in the post of an English (literature) teacher, which is no bad thing. But at the same time, it begs a few questions: was this a structured course, or not? And if so, weren't Ofsted obliged to pop in for time to time? And how many kids was she teaching?

The writer sounds like a good and dedicated teacher, and I agree with her that teaching kids about literature is a Good Thing. However, I wonder why she hasn't been speaking up loudly about how many young people she helped to study literature, that being one of the things that might have been demonstrable proof of what Kids Company did do well.

Also she talks about teaching 'young people of 16-23'. That's adult education, not childcare. And TBH, reading between the lines a bit I wonder how many of them attended more than one lesson...

MistressDeeCee · 08/08/2015 22:45

It seems KC were under no obligation to be inspected by Ofsted at all. I failt to understand why.

Sadly I feel SolidBrass is right

I don't find her awesome at all. She is a very glib talker I'll give her that..but there have been rumours about KC for ages and I don't feel she's adequately dispelled them

BoreOfWhabylon · 08/08/2015 22:48

The more I read the more convinced I am that most of the KC clients were not children.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 08/08/2015 23:06

This is an interesting read:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11792003/Kids-Companys-egalitarian-model-is-actually-autocracy-says-ex-volunteer.html

In an unpublished evaluation of the first Kids Company centre undertaken for the National Children’s Bureau in 2001 she explained the management structure of the charity: “…you know, somebody might say, well, it’s not a democratic structure. There isn’t senior management […] And the reason is that I can’t guarantee that [Kids Company’s staff] won’t get into really childish modes and abuse those systems. I prefer to keep it so that it’s quite egalitarian but at the end of the day one person has the final say.”

The same 2001 report revealed that many staff were concerned about Batmanghelidjh’s favouritism of certain young people, exercised by giving them money and goods.

This too was dismissed by her: “there is also a difficulty, according to the Director [Batmanghelidjh] which arises from members of staff […] who have had similar lives to the young people at the project, and so feel envious of the help certain young people receive”

Scaredycat3000 · 08/08/2015 23:09

I too would hazard a guess that Solidbrass is right. And we'll never hear the full extent, I bet so much was going on nobody will ever know all that happened. I've worked in several high profile places in London, completely different places and jobs, there's always somebody who questions if I'm telling the truth, and I only ever tell the lighter stuff, and I don't even know the worst. Fuck knows what was really going on in KC.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine · 08/08/2015 23:10

And this:

He added: “In the office there was always Camilla’s [Batmanghelidjh – founder and CEO of Kid’s Company] entourage of favoured kids just allowed to roam free in that office.

“There were always thefts – I remember an iPad went missing, a gym bag, my mobile phone went missing, there was always a thief in there.

“What is tragic about these favourite kids is that behind Camilla’s back they used to refer to her as the cash machine on the second floor.”
www.breitbart.com/london/2015/08/08/cameron-defends-3m-grant-paid-to-kids-company-amid-allegations-staff-ignored-thefts-by-kids/

Sounds like she was trying to have her own personal kingdom/paradise where everyone looked up to her and loved her.

I'm starting to feel almost sorry for her and wonder about her own background. Yes it was rich and privileged, but was it lonely?

LuluJakey1 · 08/08/2015 23:44

Please don't feel sorry for her. These charismatic, egotistical characters like her and Saville often have unhappy, quite lonely backgrounds. It does not excuse them inflicting their huge egos and manipulative behaviours on vulnerable young people. She is an intellgent adult who appears to be unable to see what she has become.

drudgetrudy · 08/08/2015 23:51

What concerns me is that David Cameron had the poor judgement to continue to fund KC against advice from other people-whilst simultaneously cutting funding for public services.
He was taken in by a flamboyant personality and did not have people looking into the evidence-base for her work or the accounts.
I know a lot of people were taken in but the Prime Minister should be expected to show better judgment. It all sort of fitted in with his ideology.

HelenaDove · 09/08/2015 00:25

Lulu some of the things you are saying i agree with. But you cant moan that families are being given too much in benefits or tax credits and then later in your post say that parents dont spend enough time with their kids.

What do you think is going to happen when these tax credit cuts come in. Parents are going to be doing any inconsistent intermittent hours they can get and childcare will be too expensive to pay for and/or impossible to get when you are are asked to do hours at short notice. It feels like you are using this thread about KC to have a dig at parents and stereotype those on a low income as feckless and irresponsible.

Which is exactly the kind of political climate that some of these "charities" find easy to operate in.

HelenaDove · 09/08/2015 00:27

And most of those parents will be women bringing up their kids alone.

LuluJakey1 · 09/08/2015 00:29

Are you confusing me with another poster Helena? I have not mentioned benefits or tax credits.