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

You HAVE Lulu in your post of 17.07 Blimey is it so automatic now that you no longer know when you are doing it.

Cameron would have been happy to have her funded indefinitely purely because she was Wonderful and therefore he could fend off any criticism about how he and his government don't care enough - Wonderful Camila does all the caring. Cameron (and Blair before him) wouldn't give a flying fuck whether KC was actually doing any good to disadvantaged or traumatised children, it was just 'Oh take them out of our sight and be Wonderful to them'. The Government has only ditched her because too many people have started asking questions about both financial chaos and actual damage done to young people.

I see no purpose in cutting either, especially not tax credits. It is not money that stops people being good parents. My parents were poor and uneducated and were wonderful parents. It is a willingness to do the right thing for their child when it conflicts with their own needs:
Spend money on addictions rather than providing for their child
Watching the TV lying on the sofa because they are tired or lazy rather than getting up and out there with their child or helping them with homework
Buying crap food rather than bothering to cook
Expecting others to provide for their family rather than showing children the responsibility is the parents and parents make sacrifices for children
it should be about:
Being prepared to say no rather than yes for an easy life
Being prepared to say we can't afford it rather than we have to have it now
Knowing where their children are rather than accepting they are out on the streets
Spending time talking about feelings and behaviours rather than shouting at or ignoring children
Reading with them every day
Supporting schools and school rules and valuing school rather than arguing with schools, letting children stay off, not wear uniform etc.
Giving something back- however small it is, volunteering with their child so the child sees we all take responsibility for making things better rather than waiting for someone else to do it for you.

Helena, I never suggested cutting benefits or tax credits. I said we throw money at inadequate parents and listed some of the ways we do that. Benefits is one of a long list. I know of dreadful parents who have chosen to never work. They have family support workers, social workers, key workers, SureStart support, mentors, home school liasion workers. We collect their children and bring them to school- mothers or fathers who are still in bed when our staff go round at 9.15 am because the child has not turned up and they are not answering the phone.Every one of these workers costs a salary.

The teenagers have mentors, volunteers who take them out and buy them BigMacs and treats, street youth workers who work for the local council and arrange activities, free weekends away doing things for the ones who have youth offending officers, D of E programmes.
It is madness. The parents just do not play their part and no one makes them. Is it any wonder they all love CB?
Yet I know lots of poor families where the parents are great and do their absolute best and their children get none of this support or opportunity.

What support is in place for child carers.

And there is no need to be rude Helena. Your sly little dig at me is pathetic.
Let's stick to the point and not turn this into a discussion about benefits- not what it is about at all.
It is about parents stepping up and doing the right thing for their children and us making them do that rather than just accepting they won't and compensating for them and excusing them. That is what CB does and she aims to make anyone who disagrees with her feel guilty or bad about thinking parents should be doing it.

Who do you mean when you say child carers? Nurseries? Child minders? Parents?

Children who help to care and/or who solely help to care for a disabled parent or sibling.

I didnt bring up benefits Lulu You did. IF i have wrongly assumed that you were trying to tar all low income parents with the same brush then i apologize.

And for the record i feel disappointed about the stuff about KC too.

Thank you, you have wrongly assumed.

And in my view children who are carers are one of the most neglected of all groups in terms of support for them. Many of them are not even known about. There is very little provision and they are invisible very often.

Many end up as carers because of inadequate parents who do not look after younger siblings so it falls to older siblings to do the job. Others have family members who are ill, disabled, addicts, work long hours- whole range of reasons- but the burden on the child is often not known about outside of the house. There seem to be no systems in place that pick it up until a crisis happens.

We have a system where we ask all children if they would consider themselves to be a 'carer' and we discuss what that might mean. Those who say yes, we then keep and eye on and try to support where we can but it isn't failsafe or providing substantial support. We do work with other agencies and alert them and follow up referrals for support. Many schools do not even do that.There is no statutory level or system that I am aware of although local authorities will try to provide some help. There are young carer groups in our LA but they tend to be specialist and set up by parents eg there is one for children who have siblings with life limiting illnesses that provides activities and respite for siblings. We have used Pupil Premium funding to help with things like getting children to school, transport, ICT equipment etc.

What we would not do is just hand out money in envelopes every week to make their lives easier as Kids Company have been doing.

It's not benefits to blame, it's people. I used to teach children of the super rich whose parents were entirely hopeless - drugs, booze, lying about all day, kids late into school or just not there, not doing boundaries, crap food for the kids, no homework support or erratic support, shagging sequential people practically in sight of the kids, etc. On more than one occasion we referred wealthy families to social services or other places because they were abusing their children or the children were so neglected they needed medical care. This included a peer of the realm, a rich businessman, a former television presenter, a former rock star and a PR professional. I was horrified at some of what these people considered to be acceptable behaviour and frequently told them so. That did bring them up short for a while (I can be formidable) but they would just use their money to cover up the problem.

At least one of these people is regarded as a 'national treasure' of sorts with an ego the size of a planet.

Frankly they pretty much look down on the likes of you and me, and think we are the 'little people' and if we were as brilliant and clever as they were we would have brilliant and clever jobs and lifestyles like theirs. And they continue to do what they bloody well like, and they, too, are a drain on resources.

I'm a trustee of a smaller charity dealing with a similar client group. You would have heard of us but we don't turnover anything like KC. Most (over 80%) of our income is derived from local govt as we provide a service for a client group they can't accomodate. Our biggest outgoing is staff wages. There are several parallels with KC as you can see, but that's where it ends.

We can and do account for every second of every day. Every pound spent, every client helped. We regularly bid for contracts and in doing so must demonstrate our capacity and successes. To function in any other way would be unthinkable.

CB is charismatic but terribly misguided and it will make more people dubious about funding the charitable sector. If my Chief Exec attempted a tenth of the stunts CB has tried, Id resign and take her down with me.

I think she's got the funding because she's targetted a particularly tricky area to work in, and the govt have fallen foul of the old political axiom

"Something must be done. This is something. Therefore it must be done."

Nope I don't like her.

Kids company is a great idea and did great work, but if you can't make it work financially, you fail the children who you have tried to help. The financial mismanagement is her fault, she was head of the company so the buck stops with her.I do think she was simply trying to do as much as she could, but unfortunately you can't run a charity like that, you have to make sure you have enough funds.

Interesting to think I could have been counted as one of her ever constant 36,000 clients - as a teacher in a South London school where she was running one of the early Place To Be projects. As could the 40 children in my nursery class, even though we only dropped in for sessions on a couple of occasions. I wonder if working alongside schools but in my experience not very collaboratively with them was quite a good way to get the numbers up quite impressively?

I read in the DM (cough) that the charity was paying for some children to go to fee-paying schools including the daughter of Camila's chauffeur

I'm probably naive about charity work...but private boarding school? That's frontline intervention into extreme poverty and neglect?

That is simply quite shocking re the private school. I think an enquiry into this is called for. Thank goodness for the freedom of the press to print these things. No wonder a lot of people want the press gagged. It would make life much simpler for those at the top.

Yes Solidgoldbrass Blair too-terrible judgement. Makes you wonder what other "charismatic" people politicians are impressed with rather than looking at evidence and facts.

I have read people arguing that it would be better to send children to private boarding school than put them into care.
But that is not what this charity is being funded to do.
Camilla I think sees herself as a substitute mother, and so whatever a mother might do for "her" children, is fine. So if you thought your DC would be better off in a boarding school and could pay for it, then you would. If you thought your DC on JSA needed another £50 a week to be able to live a reasonable life, then you might give it to them.

But Kids Company and Camilla are not a parent. Parents can spend their money in stupid ways on their DCs if they want to. Charities are accountable and have to prioritise.

There are plenty of charities that fund private school places for children in need. That's not too shocking IMO.

I suspect kids co did a lot of amazing things as well as a lot of unhelpful or wrongly targeted things. What makes me most cross about this is the huge levels of funding they had from central government when that funding was needed in statutory children's services who actually have power, remit and training to protect children as well as accountability and evidence base. And the reason kids co has to exist is because children's services are under funded!!

Clearly in a minority but I remember her having some very odd views on single black mothers and something about kid's company just hasn't sat right with me.

I'm really not sure what it is. Cannot put my finger on it. I have felt this way way before the current issues and airing of its dirty laundry :/

"There are plenty of charities that fund private school places for children in need. That's not too shocking IMO."

Except that this doesn't sound like a child in need - she was the daughter of the Kids Company chauffeur, who was apparently earning £40k a year. So why was she entitled to have her school fees paid by the charity?

Also, I don't know the answer here, but is it usual for charities to employ chauffeurs for their chief execs rather than expecting them to use public transport/drive themselves?

"There are plenty of charities that fund private school places for children in need. That's not too shocking IMO."

Really? There are charities spending tax payers money on sending children to private school?

That's what I thought Hackmum.

Some of this is government money - my money - and I don't begrudge a penny going to children in poverty.

But funding places at private boarding school? Employing a chauffeur? Handing out cash to children?
I don't work in the 'third sector' but I do work in the public sector and every penny has to be accounted for and outcomes measured.

How do they know whether they are effective? How do they know they are reaching the children they need to reach?
What's most concerning is that if 'third sector' provision is the future then how does it ensure accessibility and equality of access?

There are charities that pay for children to go to private school. But they are also upfront that is what they do. So if you don't like it, you can donate to someone else.

I doubt anyone thought this was what Kids Company did. You certainly wouldn't find it on their annual report (last available for 2013 )

I am constantly reminded of how I felt when people would go on and on about Saville - couldn't ever stand the look of him. I always felt uncomfortable about her. SOmething doesn't add up. I wish I learnt to trust my instincts