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.

Questions raised in the House about a secret society called the All Souls Group, where policy is developed by invitation only behind closed doors. A kind of educational freemasonry.

www.parliament.uk/edm/1992-93/2239

What's the relevance of that to CB/KC, BoffinMum?

But anyway, if you start from the position that anything advanced by Rhodes Boyson is paranoid nonsense, you'll not go far wrong. Indeed, if you start from the position that there is merit in anything Rhodes Boyson criticises you'll not do too badly. "It is wrong biblically, is homosexuality. It is unnatural. AIDS is part of the fruits of the permissive society. The regular one-man, one-woman marriage would not put us at risk in this way. If we could wipe out homosexual practices, then Aids would die out."

Boffin before doing my PhD I worked for social services fpr six years and couldn't for the life of me figure out what the fuck the NSPCC actually did beyond promote the NSPCC and refer every single call they got to child line to us, however trivial.

Were any of you on the MumsNet Q&Awith the the NSPCC a couple of years ago? They were bloody appalling. Time and again they were challenged on their role, their advertising tactics, their outcomes, their policy positions, you name it - and after a gap of some days they came back with a bunch of fundraising platitudes.

It was the only way I could provide a link of this secret society without pretty much outing myself. Rhodes Boyson actually did us a favour getting that mentioned in the House as it pretty much puts it officially into the open.

The CSJ website is shocking for the fact that everyone in senior positions appears to have no relevant hands on experience whatsoever. It's like they've gone out of their way to appoint public school kids from Oxbridge and definitely none of those social workers or community paediatricians or head teachers

I've never heard her say that she worked for NSPCC before and I'm rather sceptical. Having said that, I think they're as toothless and pointless an organisation as the RSPCC.

That article about reserves is v interesting. Increased levels of staffing by 1000%. How could that not have rung alarm bells?!

AIBU threads aren't deleted OP, (only Chat and 30 Days Only get automatically purged) so even if this thread doesn't go into Classics (and I can see why MNHQ might be wary of that) it won't be lost.

When this story first broke I read the comments on a Guardian article. They were spectacularly unhelpful, veering between "Bloody Tories trying to oppress urban youth as usual and knifing this saintly woman in the back to do so" and "Haha, she's fat and wears funny clothes and is called Batman!!! LOL!" One poster said "Actually there's a really interesting Mumsnet thread about this; I learned a lot" and the responses were "Mumsnet!? What the hell could a load of right wing yummy mummies possibly have to say?" Says it all really.

I remember that nspcc mn chat. They were appaling!

Kids Company has taken local authorities to court scores of times, in search of a care order or an admission to the child-protection register. They always win.

This is from the independent article linked above- if it's true there must be a public record??

The way CB talks about child protection she is obviously very ignorant. She seems to think that every referral should result in a child being placed on the cp register. We'll just abandon assessments then shall we? Just put every child that's ever had anyone concerned from them to a situation where CB thinks they should hand over their door keys. Wtf!!

Are we yummy then?
I thought I was a bloke in a skirt.

Kids Company has taken local authorities to court scores of times, in search of a care order or an admission to the child-protection register.

What form would such a legal action take? Are decisions by social services in respect of protection orders subject to judicial review?

Yes, it has no obvious mandate to tale court action.

A relative worked for the NSPCC for a while. The experience was sufficiently disillusioning for me never to have donated to them since.

And that blog linked earlier has it exactly right. I come to Mumsnet to debate current affairs, because there actually is a debate, to which knowledgeable people contribute. I gave up on the puerile willy-waving that passes for discussion on Question Time and The Today programme a long time ago.

I am doubtful that KC took local authorities to court regularly because that would have been a good story (even anonymised) you would expect newspapers to cover, and CB to exploit mercilessly for more funds.

One might, if one were interested, put Freedom of Information requests into Lambeth and Southwark councils asking for the number of social services decisions which have been overturned following legal action, and the number of those actions which had "Kids Company" as a party.

But I suspect we all know that the answer would be zero.

Funnily enough a search for "kids company" + court action + southwark returns lots of unrelated items and news reports where KC claims to have taken Southwark to court...

If I was in the UK I would be writing those FoI requests now, Pneunometer

Place2Be has an interesting statement about its origins and links to CB.

I was under the impression from various reports that CB had set up Place2Be, but that would appear not to be the case. Though it would seem that she was a project manager for Southwark Family Service Unit, something that has fallen off her CV

Bloody hell. Look at this from the Place2Be website. Are we really saying she has completely claimed this charity as something she set up herself?????

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Place2Be originates from a Family Service Unit (FSU) project in Southwark which was called The Place to Be. This project was managed by Camila Batmanghelidjh, placing a counsellor in a primary school. In 1993, Benita Refson (a trained counsellor) visited the project and was impressed with the idea of providing emotional support to children at an early age. After seeking professional advice and with the support of the FSU, Benita set up an independent charity called The Place to Be, recognised by the Charity Commission in September 1994. The project continued within the charity, being in about six schools in 1995 when Camila resigned. Camila has had no connection with Place2Be since 1995. Place2Be has never been connected with Kids Company.

The period from 1996 to 1998 was used to professionalise, research, develop and systematise the Place2Be model and Place2Be training, so that it could be replicated while building and maintaining quality. This work was undertaken by many leading professionals, enabling Place2Be in 1999 to expand substantially to work in 28 primary schools. Since then Place2Be (the name formally adopted in 2012) has steadily developed further. We now provide our integrated school based mental health service in 235 primary and secondary schools across England, Scotland and Wales as well as training services to many other schools, organisations and individuals.

Benita continued as Place2Be's Chief Executive on a full-time, voluntary basis until January 2014 when Catherine Roche became CEO, Benita remaining a trustee as non-executive President.

I read the guardian article with Deborah Orr, and even without the benefit of hindsight it sounded like a load of bollocks. But it looks like Debs sat there going 'ooooh, that all makes sense now you,be explained it'

Seriously, why did so few people question anything she said?

This in a 2006 BBC report on Woman of the Year news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6056196.stm

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Determined to realise her vision, Camila, at the age of 25, stopped her mortgage repayments to finance the foundation of her own charity, The Place2Be, which today provides therapy for 20,000 children every year in schools throughout the country.

Taken to court by her building society, she was only saved from having her flat repossessed by a sympathetic judge.

The same two-bedroom £70,000 north London flat has since been re-mortgaged twice to help finance Camila's second charity, Kids Company.

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Again, the implication is that it is her charity. As it says in a Sunday Times interview, May 2014.

www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/Magazine/article1412730.ece

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Well according to Glamour, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The BBC, and The Spectator, she founded Place2Be! How is history being rewritten and by whom?