to think Camila Batmanghelidjh must be lying when she says she has done nothing wrong in her spending of Kid's Company Charity Funding?

[LuluJakey1]

She is like Jimmy Saville in that what she has been doing has been under all of all our noses and we have refused to speak up about it or believe it.

It is not just the luvvies who have been up close and personal with her- involved with the charity and CB at a very close level, some even Trustees. It is also the employees and the parents of children, the children themselves, the volunteers. We are not talking about a hidden mis-use of funding. We are talking aout a whole culture of open waste and self-indulgence.

I know it is from The Daily Mail but it is actually an interview with het.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3199527/My-heart-clear-says-Kids-Company-boss-Batmanghelidjh-admits-charity-paid-school-fees-employees-children-denies-wrongdoing.html

£5000 a month rent on an Art Deco House with private swimming pool - which houses a member of staff, and the swimming pool is used by CB but hot by any children- they are 'not allowed' (her words)

£40,000 chauffeur- now a specialist worker (according to CB). also has private school and therapist funding for his 2 children.

Staff( how many?) have their children sent to private schools because the job is stressful and it is part of a 'staff well-being package'

The Chauffeur's sister is also employed - now as a 'brilliant accountant', last summer as 'the woman who does my sewing' (mind you that would be a full-time job in itself, but it does imply the charity pays for those vile outfits much as I suspected)

25 young people given £769,000 a year funding - £31,000 a year each, to do nothing. They are CB's specially selected young people- many of whom have received funding for many years. She describes them as 'like a family, hanging round the house'. She deals with their funding herself.

Yet STILL CB complains staff should not have spoken up about any of this and implies those who have will suffer for it.

In my view this woman and her behaviours are corrupt, dishonest and immoral.

Are my views unreasonable? I feel this could be jus the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is yet to emerge and prosecutions will be very likely.

I think there should be a down- to the -bone, in-depth investigation of every aspect of the work of this charity and of CB. Not simply any concerns that have now been raised but a complete trawl of the spending, the practices and the behaviours of CB herself.

www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/batman.html

Like father, like daughter?

So - no need to reshape someone's reputation with facts and the rebuttal of misunderstandings - oh no! Just smear the other party!

Yeah. Because the main "other party" in this would appear to be the permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office and/or the ministers in the Cabinet Office. An organisation which thinks that threats, smears and PR will function in that conflict would have to be deluded (which of course KC appear to be).

One is reminded of the massive clue stick which finished the Muslim Council of Britain as a serious political force (I use the word serious in the loosest of senses, of course). Hazel Blears told Daud Abdullah to stop flirting with threats against UK naval forces; he denied all knowledge of what he'd signed; she re-iterated her point; he threatened her as a cabinet minister with a libel action; she sent them an elegant, extended "Arkell v Pressdram" response saying "see you in court, and by the way, fuck off". The MCB haven't been heard from since; no-one in government will answer their phone calls.

iaindale.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/exclusive-blears-tells-mcb-deputy-chair.html

It's all rough and tumble stuff, but if you sue cabinet ministers in their official role, or attempt to get down and dirty with permanent secretaries, you are going home in a legal ambulance.

Well, to be fair to Batmangelidj pere, if he had been a political prisoner of the Shah, he was probably vilely treated and no one could blame him if he lost his mind asa result. The Shah's security apparatus were horrific torturers.

Google informs me that the individual to whom she has turned to salvage her reputation is a convicted tax evader who cultivates a somewhat... flamboyant presentation

www.prweek.com/article/1296109/pr-man-richard-hillgrove-escapes-custodial-sentence-tax-fraud

My favourite- he was pals with the shah.

CB said he was imprisoned after the shah was outsted.

It is perhaps relevant that the town of Sherborne is in Oliver Letwin's constituency of West Dorset.

Letwin is an honorary governor of Sherborne School for Girls, Batmangheldjh's alta mater, and, it would appear, a director.
www.sherborne.com/Our-governors

directors.findthecompany.co.uk/l/2949585/Oliver-Letwin

Good find, Cate. It really is a spider's web of connections, isn't it? Utterly corrupt as far as I can tell.

Some great posts on here. For me, what I find infuriating is the damage that has actually doubtless been done to some of the service users by the corruption of good therapeutic principles and blurring of boundaries and that this might endanger contributions to genuine and well run causes in the future...and indeed it is a stark warning that when you leave social care to the "Big Society" it is at risk. History is so easily forgotten, once all social care was based on charity; public sector social care aimed to regulate and better run much needed services.

It must have been a nightmare and so frustrating for the good workers in KC to see what was going on around them. Most people I know involved with volunteering for it dropped out pretty fast. CB evidently has talent in fundraising and understands the basics of therapy, yet she appears to have insisted on grandiosely keeping control rather than delegating to those who would be much better than her at the rest.

When CB talked of the need of neglected youth to have positive attachment figures and in a sense be reparented, it is based on firm evidence that those who manage OK in adulthood despite tremendously difficult childhoods usually have had one relatively long term and stable adult figure in their life. Perhaps, a family member from extended family or even a teacher if they have involvement throughout the school journey. Yet what has happened here seems to be some sort of creation of a new dysfunctional family for the service users, complete with young adult bullies hanging around to exploit the younger members.

When CB talked of "damage on the cellular level", it is based on legitimate research about the longterm physical effects of neglect; yet CB is contributing to discrediting this research by associating it with her chaos and trying to make it sound mysterious or spiritual in some way.

That she earned £95K a year does not seem a problem to me, many borough wide London mental health services have service leads at the top end of Band 8 which approaches £90k after several years service and with london allowance included. That she spooked the London rich into donating large sums by convincing them that the youth around the corner (and London is cheek by jowl richest living next to poorest) would be out to mug and rob them if they weren't looked after, is perhaps fair game. After all, as mental health services are in such short supply, you often have to exaggerate the severity of someone's problems to get them accepted into a service, anyone referring into services is used to that. It's fascinating though to me how much money was poured in. They burned through in months the budget that a London adult primary care mental health service has for a whole year to serve a population of some 250,000.

The get your house and servants funded by your charity is also unfortunately not an isolated incident. I worked some years ago briefly for someone who has received a Queen's honour for services to charity and they too have a knack of emptying the pockets of the rich to get involved in their trendy causes. In refiling their paperwork within one day it was clear to me that their London penthouse and the various staff who were spending as much time on personal errands as on charity work had salaries paid from the charity. There must be so much more of this around.

It must have been a nightmare and so frustrating for the good workers in KC to see what was going on around them. Most people I know involved with volunteering for it dropped out pretty fast.

Those two sentences taken together rather beg the question (and isn't it nice to be able to use that phrase correctly for a change?) of just how many "good workers" there were at KC.

When CB talked of "damage on the cellular level", it is based on legitimate research about the longterm physical effects of neglect

If you mean epigenetics, CB knew about as much about it as she did about travelling by bus.

I have read (possibly on one of the recent threads) that professionals didn't stay long.

CB seems to have a lot of staff who were former 'clients'.

Lulu is my new girl crush hero. I have learned so much from this thread thanks to her.

What gets me is that I and so many others is that she headed such a high profile organisation yet few of us have even heard about it.

As I think I said, if what she says about epigenetics is true, the entire generation of WW2 babies would have grown up to be ravings nutters by now.

I mean their children would have inherited en masse the propensity to be raving nutters.

Yes, people might be put off giving to charity and that's a pity. The government is selling off their own services, leaving it open to abuse and less regulation which defeats the object. This will continue going on.

Yes, there is such a thing as epigenetics and changes to gene expression caused by trauma.. But what CB said was about the damage needing to be "massaged" away. That doesn't suggest she understands epigenetics really.

And massage being recommended in an unregulated, poorly supervised and controlled organisation with both clients and workers who have suffered neglect and abuse, with seemingly no mechanisms to report inappropriate behaviour, sounds like a terrible idea.

I mean their children would have inherited en masse the propensity to be raving nutters.

My dad drove a tank from the Normandy Beaches to Germany in 1944/45

Sorry, just letting out my inner child.

It's what Camila would have wanted.

:o (I like your name Bore)

(I like yours too Bosky )

Regardless of the spending excesses, the reality is that very few actual children seem to have been supported over the years.

And given that Alan Yentob is excellent at making creative TV programmes whilst other people think about the boring finance and compliance issues, since when did anyone think this was an appropriate qualification to head up a children's charity?! I think there we have the elephant in the room.

BTW both my parents' first memories are being in cellars during air raids.

Cate

Wow that you found yet another link between Sherborne school and KC.

I'm particularly intrigued by this aspect of this debacle.

Why are so many of the key players connected to that school??

Why hasn't this been in the papers?

have the daily fail journos stopped reading mn?