(part 2) to think that Camila Batmanghelidgh must be lying when she says she has done nothing wrong in her spending of Kids' Company 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.

They were helping some desperate people,

Were they? All we've see so far is three A-grade students who KC provided with a bit of help while they doing their A Levels. Who else?

Regardless of who was helped sadly it was terribly run and wasted huge amounts of funds that other charities would have killed for.

That is why people are criticising CB. It looks like her charity was little more than a vanity project and she is not offering any facts to dispute that.

Indeed, there is a lack of evidence generally, which is why there is a formal enquiry.

And there are questions about whether these people were actually being helped, or whether poor professional practice did them more harm.

There is a lot of careful chosen language used in these newspaper articles, designed to be emotive - you see some terms over and over again. For example children, starvation, food banks, shoes, homework, school, Christmas, presents, being saved, gangs, drugs. It is a kind of rhetoric of philanthropy and presses all the right buttons, which is why the organisation was left unsupervised for so long, and why anyone being critical is accused of 'having a go' and asked 'won't you think of the poor kiddies?'.

In the meantime, the words we are not seeing are: collaboration, progression, development, training, work, jobs, independence, health, strength, being resourceful, pride, resolution. These are the key aspects that should have been in place in order to move children on in their lives and into a position where they no longer need support and can become assets to society rather than long-term beneficiaries. These are the aims of most of the public services that have stepped in. The routes to these aims are more complex and less emotive than the ones invoked in the Guardian article. It can involve forcing clients to accept they don't need as much care, or that they need to become more self-reliant in order to improve their own lives. This does not look as caring as dishing out goodies and can even look harsh. But there is an important role for this in rehabilitating families.

Incidentally the part of the article that I found most paradoxical is the statement that the support workers did such a good job because they were always available at the end of a phone. Then a couple of lines down CB says that the Children's Commissioner helpline is useless as none of the clients knows how to ring it and they would not have enough phone credit anyway.

1. Should KC not have made this number readily available to ex-clients?
2. How did they ring their support workers then, if phone credit is such an issue?
3. If they had phone credit only because it was being given to them by KC, could it be argued that this fuelled a desire to ring that might not have been there if people had to think about the cost?

Regardless of who was helped sadly it was terribly run and wasted huge amounts of funds that other charities would have killed for.That is why people are criticising CB. It looks like her charity was little more than a vanity project and she is not offering any facts to dispute that.

In a nutshell.

It's vastly unfair that CB had 5 PAs and a dressmaker and a chauffeur when many very deserving charities are fighting for crumbs.

Phone went weird and posted that on wrong thread

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3267799/Scadal-hit-charity-Kids-Company-facing-new-questions-giving-hundreds-thousands-pounds-tax-free-employees.html
And here we go again. More financial mismanagement.

Hah! I just came to post that Lulu

Here are some extracts from the article

The Mail on Sunday has been passed a Kids Company document listing 25 ‘clients’ – vulnerable young people registered with the charity – who between them were handed £769,150 tax-free during 2014.

Some of those on the list have previously said publicly that they were employed by Kids Company, triggering claims that they were registered as clients to avoid paying income tax and National Insurance.

One person on the list of clients is a 26-year-old woman who attended Oxford University. She was registered as a Kids Company client throughout 2013 and 2014 and in this capacity the charity gave her £19,111 in 2013 and £41,556 last year, making a total of £60,667.

But according to networking website LinkedIn, the woman was employed as a Kids Company ‘research and training manager’ between 2012 and 2015, triggering questions about why she was also accepting financial assistance as a client.

Another person on the leaked list is a painter and decorator in her late 20s. She received £50,103 in 2014 and £44,613 in 2013, making a tax-free total of £94,716. But in 2013 she told BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live that she worked for Kids Company doing up houses belonging to the underprivileged. During the show she praised Ms Batmanghelidjh for helping her settle in London after arriving from Jamaica. It is not clear whether she accepted the client funds of £94,716 on top of any Kids Company salary or instead of it.

This week, MPs on the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee will quiz Ms Batmanghelidjh and Mr Yentob on why Kids Company became bankrupt and was forced to close with the loss of 600 jobs.

The Commons public administration committee hearing was today.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2015/oct/15/kids-company-face-grilling-by-mps-live

Batmanghelidjh was accused by one MP of providing a “torrent of verbal ectoplasm” in her answer to a question

They seem to have the measure of her, then.

From the BBC:

"Leaders of collapsed charity Kids Company have said there were four suicide attempts, stabbings and a murder in the wake of its closure.

Chairman of trustees Alan Yentob made the claim as he and founder Camila Batmanghelidjh faced questions from MPs about how the charity was run.

Mr Yentob said the murder of a boy who had been using the charity's services took place five days after it shut.

He said it was related to "the absence of a place for these children to go"."

indeed

This so sad. There are many many kids on waiting lists, with nowhere safe to go, who are falling down through nets that do not have the ability to caffe as they would like. Ask any SW, CAHMs worker or teacher. The money spent on CB and now investigating her affairs could really provide a life line.

They sound completely incompetent with all this talk of mystery donors who apparently weren't around the previous month when staff and creditors couldn't be paid, but mysteriously appeared and them vanished (because nasty bad mean people who hate kids company and spread rumours) when it became clear that the organisation was no longer financially viable.

What does Yentob mean - they had assets in the form of buildings - was he planning to pay people with bricks?

The select committee hearings with CB and Botney are, frankly, hilarious. She's obviously used to be surrounded by a claque of supporters and thinks she is in charge, and he comes over as rather dim. Certainly, as with the hearings over DMI that Mark Thompson made a fool of himself at, you are left with the distinct impression that senior BBC staff are not the brightest of sparks, but are used to only be questioned by people at their intellectual level.

www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/5e1ce27a-7279-4ba3-9f3f-ed9998fbae7e

Here's the link to the select committee, if anyone wants it. Starts at about 9:43

I've just watched some of the performance in front of the select committee. Talk about not wanting to give a Straight answer. Camilla in particular came across as very evasive.

I got as far as the first hour before the internet cut off. They're starting to get slightly pissed off at her inability to give an answer to any of their questions.

This answer she's not giving about the number of referrals to children's services after KC closed could potentially get her into a lot of trouble.

Camilla Batshitcrazy.

Who are they kidding? She reckons that since they closed down, society has broken down, rapes, murders, etc.

And Yentob is still defending this shit?

Interviewer: 'An individual was given £75k'
Batshitcrazy: 'No, that's what we spent on in-patient treatment for him. He tried to commit suicide and the police caught him in mid-air.'

WTF!?

That story is fantastic, maybe too fantastic to be true, but if it is true (and I doubt it), she shouldn't be disclosing identifying details about him in public!

11.17 - possibly the best telly ever as Camila forgets she's supposed to be answering the questions not asking them.

Amazing television. I am simultaneously fascinated and repulsed. Suspect she is delusional and a fabulist as well. The same characteristics/personality traits that people found charming, offbeat, quirky, etc in different circumstances now clearly come across as disordered and not altogether well.

Batshitcrazy: 'No, that's what we spent on in-patient treatment for him. He tried to commit suicide and the police caught him in mid-air.'

Presumably using a jet pack or spider senses. How come that wasn't in the news?

MissBattleax

It was extraordinary viewing.