(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.

Jeeves, in that case please list the organisations concerned as really knowledge of them needs to be in the mix here.

WRT to the number of children helped, I think the argument is that per capita this was done on a rather expensive basis, and that if this money had been funnelled to Lambeth and Southwark in the first place, there would have been less pressure on the LA to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and they could have done a lot more.

Highonhope, I read that Camilla stated that 90% of children/YPs were self-referrals, and no child would be turned away. I have also heard that applications for help via LAs/social services were routinely ignored or rejected. Is this correct, and if so how was it justified?

Here is one organisation I know that helps parents organise statutory support via LAs.

IPSEA

I have followed both of these threads with a combination of fascination, disgust, and huge respect for all the MN users who have posted with such intelligence and thoughtfulness. To me, the CB/KC story reads as a classic story of fraud perpetuated by a self-mythologizing, self-aggrandising, narcissistic huckster-fabulist who grew bolder and bolder as the years went on and no one questioned her methods or motives, or held her accountable in any way. Pretty obvious that she outright bought the loyalty and silence of those who worked with her most closely. It's not a new story, but it's still a sad and tawdry one for everyone involved.

'at the moment it's a rubbishy plan which doesn't provide for the therapies the child actually needs'

So how did KC decide which therapies the child needed if they weren't specified on the EHCP?
Who assessed this child to decide on the therapies that KC provides?

It's not easy to get a decent EHCP, but it's not impossible.

Jeronimoh I think the level of care was often good if the key worker was organised. We covered education, housing ,benefits, getting bank accounts, passports sorted, counselling, health care, etc. We had to fill in forms monthly of outcomes, ongoing issues etc. It was often dependent on how good a keyworker was as to how well a young person did though so I guess that is a bit haphazard. Thousands of families/clients benefitted over the years for sure though.
Some were not allowed to flourish and leave though which is why I left.

You see, when I give money to places I like to see profiles like this rather than bollocks turbans and bollocks stories about things that could never have happened.

Jane McConnell - IPSEA's Chief Executive: is a long serving IPSEA member of staff. Jane has a son with complex SEN. Jane graduated in Economics and Public Administration from London University and later in life took a postgraduate Diploma in Law from Nottingham Law School. She was subsequently called to the Bar. Jane has worked as a tax Planning Advisor, an Executive Recruiter and as part of the Public Affairs/ fundraising team for the Leonard Cheshire Foundation. Jane joined IPSEA as a volunteer and then started working for us as a caseworker before taking over responsibility for the Advice Line, and more recently Legal Support. In 2008 Jane became IPSEA’s Chief Executive.

You're very brave, highonhope, good on you for speaking out. This thread has continued to shock and fascinate me.

Highonhope, how many children would you say were properly helped and allowed to move on at 18-21-ish? And able to cope with that?

We did need input from staff. Yes, thanks, highonhope. Very important that you came on.

GriefLeavesItsMark I don't know about actual figures as i had nothing to do with general paperwork. I do know that young people would bring their friends as it was seen as 'easy money' with sometimes no commitment to complete education etc. I think it would be true that clients weren't turned away.

[For the record, we're quite pleased with DS2's support and EHCP, actually. We think it's better than the Statement of SEN he had. More cohesive and easily comprehensible. LA has overhauled its staff recently as well and we've been quite impressed].

When I saw the figures of under 2k in London that seems about right to me. KC are present in many schools to offer support and counselling. There were/are about 25-30 'favourites" that used to be key worked from head office by C's PA's C herself, finance workers etc. The DMail has got that completely spot on and the amounts spent were very high. ( I'm not a Mail fan at all but at least they have exposed a lot, the Guardian are in complete denial and will be very ashamed in a year or so, I've given up buying it!)

I was only really involved with my young people but heard from them about the other clients and met some through the young people I looked after. Many of the favourites were capable of moving on.

Yes, the Daily Mail coverage impressed me as well. Systematic, well organised and properly funded investigation. Can't understand why the broadsheets aren't doing more.

Well you need a good editor and properly funded reporters and then good stories happen. It has been getting rarer and rarer.

I believe that when the files were handed over there were only about 500 clients.

500? What about the 4000 that came to the Xmas dinner?

As far as I can tell children's/YP's needs were assessed by interviewing the child and with no involvement with LAs. Did this mean a child could be receiving duplicate services from the LA and KC, but with the added bonus of cash handouts? I mean was there any monitoring on this?

Good point, Grief ....

Grief I think I read on the other thread that KC were kind of an outsourcing of SS/LA care? So presumably some were referred to the LA who referred them to KC.

I'm not sure about the families who just turned up at the charity's doors though, and some obviously did get both SS care and KC care (see trainer story posted previously).

I've got a bit hung up on those Xmas day dinners, and had a bit of a look around.

That Guardian photo looks to be The England Suite at Oval; the largest suite they have. This room seats 510 in theatre style, so you would be looking at eight sittings to feed 4000 people.

This pretty much cannot have happened. You have to get 510 people into a room, get them sat at a table, get them to queue for their meals, get them sat down with their meals, have them eat their meals and then clear up the waste before you get the next lot in. You really couldn't do that in under two hours, which would have meant 16 hours to feed everyone, so your first sitting would start at 7am and the last would end at 11pm.

This is just a ridiculous notion. You'd also probably need to constantly wash plates and cutlery, because I doubt the Oval has 4000 plates and 4000 sets of cutlery on standby.

Of course, they could have booked The Ashes for 350 and the Jardine for 450 as well at the same time. This would have meant serving meals in three separate spaces, but you could have theoretically sat 1310 people at once. This still means you have to run three sittings in three locations over a course of six hours, so from 11am to 5pm, say. This also means, however, that you would need around 200 staff to cope with the sheer number of people in one sitting, and I doubt you could get an extra 200 people in those three rooms without problems.

But KC didn't use more than one dining room anyway: "Outside the dining room, where dozens of volunteers were dishing out hot food."

www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/25/kids-ompany-christmas-party-the-oval

Also notice in the picture that there are empty seats in the dining room during the day. This couldn't have happened if you were feeding 4000 people within a reasonable time frame.

I would suggest, going by The England Suite being the dining room, they probably fed more like 1000 people and I am being generous with that figure. In reality, I suspect it was more like 750. It would mean, at your tightest productive capacity, doing two sittings over four hours, so starting at 11am and finishing at 3pm. This would then make sense in terms of people actually coming in in dribs and drabs, so you would probably actually finish somewhere around 6pm.

But she did not feed 4000 people. I will tell you that for nothing. Logistically, it's impossible.