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.

It's a scandal and prosecutions should be forthcoming. IMHO.

In the youtube clip she mentioned 8r hinted at mental health issues the 25 adults are like some strange fostering/sponsoring research project lets see how far we can bring the deprived up the ranks its really odd

Who audited that charity?

Being well meaning and largely doing some good work may not be enough but in my books it is at least a start
And to me makes any comparison with Saville inappropriate
Let's say there's bad and there's BAD

I just feel any useful analysis of the situation at KC over the last twenty or so years, and previously at A Place To Be, needs to keep some perspective and clarity

CB is not unlike Heather Mills IMO.

JS raised loads of money for children's charities. He did a lot of good...

Sorry MrsJayy - I misunderstood.

And I agree with PPs, what irks me most about the KC case isn't per se the charity, it's that government figures are moving more towards a model that is clearly not a sustainable one with no accountability.

Thats ok it was vague tbf

On balance though he (JS) did a huge amount of harm
Issues around CB are overwhelmingly about financial mismanagement
To me there is a big difference
That is all

" "Perhaps her background has a different relationship with facts and data to our own - might explain some things?"

oh you mean cultural differences? oh please, lets not go there. I bet her family came over in 79 when she would have been about 13. She then attended a rather nice establishment boarding school."

Actually I don't think Bobo was that far off the mark- although it's down to familial and not cultural differences.

Her father was a colourful character and published alternative medicine quack, who appeared to have the same predilection for talking pseudoscientific twaddle over substantiable boring old facts.

There are issues around harm by CB that are under investigation.

I work for children's services, and a London authority I worked for previously booked her to do a presentation to us as part of an away day. Baffling.

She was, predictably, met with a frosty response as she wasn't able to pull on our heartstrings in the same way she was with others who do not work in the field of child protection. She showed many photos of a particular child's house which was in a terrible, terrible state. When questioned, she could not say that the obvious neglect had been reported to children's services, and tried to convince us that there was 'another way' to deal with such a situation. What was really alarming was that this model was being held up to children's services some sort of fresh approach to protecting vulnerable children.

AlbrechtDurer's post is spot on:

"This is what happens when taxpayers' money is taken away from accountable local authorities etc. and given to rather less accountable charities on no other basis other than our (poor judge of character) Prime Minister being influenced by their charismatic, colourful figureheads. I suspect there will be a fair few more cases like this to come out in the next months and years."

Interestingly I critiqued some 'Place to be' research for my dissertation and digging around the acknowledgements / funding, etc discovered that they funded their own researchers. Not only that the methodology was potentially biased as all the result were 'checked! By the case managers (who one would assume have a vested interest in success) before being passed to the researcher and there was no randomised at all. Despite their being some missing cases (as in the children had the intervention but the researchers didn't see their results) their results were positive and showed that their interventions worked but there was a great big question mark that they were hand picked by the case managers. Their results were also out of keeping with similar research which was randomised and had a larger sample.

I nearly didn't include it in my dissertation as it was critiqued so poorly - had no idea until recently that Place To Be was part of KC (as I live outside of London and had never heard of KC until it hit the news despite working in the sector!).

I am astonished at the amount of money given to such a small geographical area on the type of data / evidence they were returning... Raises lots of questions.

I am pleased with the constructive debate on this thread as I too have been uncomfortable with the level of scrutiny paid to KC compared with the large amounts of funding. And that ministers overrode colleagues whose job it was to recommend, or not, whether to fund the charity on more than one occasion. Emperor's New Clothes springs to mind as a comparison if the JS one is unpalatable. Many people felt something was amiss but her personality was too big to raise their head above the parapet. I think the more we hear the less acceptable the charity's work will seem, relative to the amounts spent. That they can't prove/justify their work through impact measures and objective outcomes is not acceptable post austerity period 2010 onwards.

According to KC figures at the beginning of the year.

"Since 2008 the charity has received around £30 million in public funding, including an £8 million award which concludes in March 2015. For this sum they have supported 750 children and young people annually."

Now we know that the definition of children & young people is a dodgy one when used in the context of KC. We also know that KC have a habit of inflating their figures somewhat preposterously (one story goes that for every child they provided with a free meal they counted 30 children helped as it would improve the atmosphere in their classroom).

However taking the figures at face value that means that KC received £5,700 per child they claimed to have helped for the last 7 years. So more than a school place and significantly more than any other funding initiatives that I'm aware of.

Of course, different sources also claim that the charity intensively supports 18,000 children (cost of £240 a year each) and reaches 36,000 (cost of £80 a year each) but those definitions seem even laxer.

tethersend that is alarming she meant her way not the proper child protection way.

For those who took issue with my comment that Savile was a convicted sex offender, I would just like to point out that the verb "convict" means "to prove or declare guilty of an offence, especially after a legal trial". Savile was not tried because he died before proof of his crimes emerged but he was declared guilty in the 2013 NSPCC/Met Police "Giving victims a voice report" and again in the 2015 Johnstone/Dent report for the NHS Health and Social Care Advisory Service. This in turn prompted Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to apologise to his victims.
So I reiterate my point that to compare CB to a convicted sex offender is grossly unfair and inaccurate.

www.theguardian.com/uk i dont know if this is clicky but she wants to open a childrens food bank now

Jeez I'm beginning to think she is just plain bonkers.

Camila Batshitcrazy

Also the sources you are citing seem to be exclusively Daily Mail ones. Seriously?

There's been disquiet in the sector for ages. People have been wary about voicing their concerns but some were brave enough to tentatively suggest that things weren't right:

osca.co/2015/02/need-talk-kids-company/

I thought that London was reasonably well covered by food banks.

But the lack of food at home may not be directly related to availability of foodstuffs. And the idea of handing bags of vegetables to children seems wrong (for they do not have control of means to cook them). Or is this to be an initiative for the "kids" age 20+, who might have independent access to a kitchen?

The Guardian article says she would also like to open dining facilities, if a kitchen can be secured. That sounds far better - especially during school holidays.

Many church halls have good kitchens, plus some equipment. Shouldn't be hard to find one or more, and to start using them rapidly.

she wants to open a childrens food bank now

...which will claim to feed 36,000 children and turn out to have spent all its money buying caviar and champagne for a couple of 30 year olds and CB's servants' children.

Tinklypink that's very interesting. Did you get feedback on that part of your dissertation?

She says she can't cook herself, though.

She'll need a chef, perhaps.

Not sure if you saw this piece from 2012 (which is eerily prescient - seven PAs, ffs!):

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/may/04/time-management-tips-busy-people

"Seven PAs keep me going around the clock. It starts at 8am, and finishes about 12am. I dictate everything while playing with toy helicopters, remote-controlled cars and plastic spoons. At night, I go home carrying a multicoloured laundry bag full of papers, filed in a manner incomprehensible to everyone – including myself. So I hold tight a little book full of lists, which I add to at 4am. My joy is to use a felt-tip and colour out completed tasks."