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.

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

Since when did repossession actions end up in front of judges?

It's a little more complex and I think work unpicking. This is my understanding.

1. CB got a job on a small council project.
2. CB turned a cupboard into a counselling facility and arranged for a counsellor to see a few children in a school.
3. Benita Refson was better qualified and more experienced and the person who actually set up a proper charity called The Place To Be. It originally ran in six schools and then grew over the next two decades to become very big.
4. CB had little if nothing to do with its proper incorporation and expansion.

Since when did asylum seekers get mortgages?

I wonder at what point how long ago the Place 2 Be put that bit about it's origins on it's website?

They seem to be making a very distinct point about CB's lack of involvement...I wonder if that is pre or post-KC meltdown?...

Yes, a clear dissociation there. I noticed that too.

Since when did asylum seekers get mortgages?

Since when did asylum seekers get work permits? Since when, indeed, did asylum seekers get places at UK universities in the 1980s?

I wonder, if she resigned from Place2be in 1995, did she jump or was she pushed?

I would assume that the pointed disassociation is recent, though that is only an assumption on my part (I only looked at the PLace2Be website today)

CB was a refugee - ie her asylum application was successful. Refugees have always been allowed to work, go to university, get mortgages etc, subject to the normal rules and checks. In CB's case she seems to have had access to money so I'm not that surprised she was able to get a mortgage. (Though don't believe a word of the "sympathetic judge" story - they are there to adjudicate on the application of the law not make a moral judgment about whether the nasty bank should let poor Camila off because she is doing Good Dees)

Deeds

Keeping Kids Company was set up in 1996, wasn't it? Ie she left PLace2Be then set up KC

Place2be definitely had it up when I first started looking into CB - so around the time of the first articles about the lady who had donated her life savings.

The whole website is v professional and it's easy to find out what they do, who their trustees are and annual reports from every year not just 2013 so I suspect it's been there a long time. It must have royally pissed them off every time CB referred to them as something like a small lesser charity she founded before moving on to something better

Interesting that they got Kate Middleton as a patron too and she is sticking to v easy uncontroversial child based charities like children's hospices which no-one could possibly object to. Clearly someone wasn't drawn to the lure of Kid's Company or would she have been competing for CB's limelight?

Wow....

Just found this:

I worked for a year in Place2Be in 2005, which is when I first came across her. Camila was one of the original founders, although no one would really talk about her contribution – perhaps unfairly, but I had the feeling that it wasn’t an easy parting. She was viewed as high risk by the professionals I came across then, undoubtedly with some results, but it was viewed as being beyond the place of ethical safe practice. Hell, we weren’t even allowed to touch a child who was in distress in the Place2Be room. If you read Camila’s book, Shattered Lives, a series of letters to the damaged children she has known and worked with, it gives an idea of the strength of her passion, resolve, way of working, and the results.. not always orthodox.

Sorry was meant to have the source link:
www.juliawebbharvey.com/tag/camila-batmanghelidjh/

Perhaps the Cambridges did some proper due diligence before deciding on which charities to patronize (is that the right word in this context??)

Cross post Christine

CB's CBE is interesting too. I think it must be honorary because she is not a British Citizen (see also Melinda Gates, who was honoured at the same time).

According to <a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140716082043/www.place2be.org.uk/our-story/the-early-years-of-place2be/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Web Archive, the page said exactly the same over a year ago. Why did they go out of their way to outline the lack of CB's involvement? This whole topic is fascinating.

This has some interesting detail on the origins of Place2Be - relevant paras are:

Place2Be started with Camila Batmanghelidjh, best known as the founder of Kids Company, a charity working with vulnerable children and young people. In 1991, while a part-time therapist at the Family Service Unit in Camberwell, funded by BBC Children in Need, she was called to Brunswick Park, a primary school in Southwark, to treat a seven-year-old girl who frequently tried to commit suicide. After several twice-weekly meetings at the school, the girl felt confident enough to talk. 'Since the age of five, she had been sexually abused,' Batmanghelidjh recalls. 'I realised here was a central flaw: that children who don't have a competent carer in their lives, can't access help.'

With the backing of the Family Service Unit and money raised by re-mortgaging her home, Batmanghelidjh set up The Place to Be (its original name) to help troubled children. Initially operating out of a converted broom cupboard at Brunswick Park, Batmanghelidjh expanded the service into four more schools and by the end of 1993, had recruited about 50 volunteer and paid therapists from training colleges such as Regent's College and the Tavistock Institute. 'Camila was pioneering new ground by bringing an awareness of the psychological and emotional needs of children in the school context,' says Jocelyne Quennell, who as the course leader for Sesame training in drama and movement therapy at the Central School of Speech and Drama, supervised the project.

In 1993 Benita Refson joined Place2Be as the director, and the following year got it registered as a charity. By 1996 it had expanded out of London to Lordswood Junior School in Chatham, Kent, and thanks to Refson's drive is now in 128 schools nationally, helping 42,000 children, and is supported by 460 volunteer counsellors.

Place2Be is not the only charity working with children in primary schools. Others include School-Home Support, Barnardo's, Pyramid and Kids Company - which Batmanghelidjh set up in 1995, after leaving Place2Be. Although known for its street-level centres, Kids Company also works as a permanent presence in 33 schools throughout London, offering 'a multi-disciplinary holistic team': therapists, social workers, artists, musicians, complementary health workers, educationalists, mentors - 'all aimed at building resilience in children,' she says.

I wonder whether the re-mortgaged flat mentioned above in relation to PLace2Be is the same place that was re-mortgaged (twice) to help fund KC...
Anyway, I thought that this professional seminar - with foreword by CB - was ironic, given the OP.

Apparently there is a champagne on facebook for her to be made a Dame!

I see a lot of parallels between her and the late JS. A few posters have mentioned that it is outrageous to compare the two, but I'm not so sure...

Not unlike JS, she poses as a "pied piper" ; has droves of "followers" ,who call her " Mom"?

I'm not a big watcher of TV, but I have to say that I thought she was just a " trendy left wing token white woman "who had converted to Islam ,and I thought she was a nobody who happened to tick all the right boxes for the "right on brigade" of the 90's media.

Aside from the financial misdemeanours , I suspect there is a more sinister side to her that I'm sure will be revealed as further investigations are made.

What I'm certain of is that this is not all her own doing... she hasn't acted alone, that's for sure.

christine DH and I donate about 10% of our income to charity and it's a sizable amount. We have a checklist to ensure we are helping the right charities and annual financials is the first item on our checklist.

I would be surprised if the Royal family didn't have a checklist of sorts and annual filings is probably on that list. I think CB was probably rather too biased in her political relationships for them too. This is something we look for in deciding what charities to support. We have become a whole lot more picky about who we donate to and how much is given after a couple of negative experiences. Its not about giving with string attached but having faith that the management team in place is suitably qualified to spend the money in way that brings maximum benefit to those they are aiming to help. We donate to 3 UK charities, two of which are for children. All are very well run with management being careful to be politically neutral at all times, i.e. professional.

Exactly Want2Be - DH and I donate more modest amounts but you can bet I pour over each of those charities' details with a fine tooth comb before parting with a penny. Chuggers hate me - they can never answer the sorts of questions I have about the organisations they are working for