Government cuts hit Kids Company and Camila Batmanghelidjh is stepping down

[4kidsandaunicorn]

Here

Does anyone know anymore about this? I've only read the one article.

"And nothing outside of South London?"

You mean apart from Bristol and Liverpool?

NSPCC has over 1800 members of staff btw

*You mean apart from Bristol and Liverpool?

NSPCC has over 1800 members of staff btw*

I genuinely didn't know whether there were sites outside of South London, hence the question mark essexmummy

And I don't think you can compare KC with the NSPCC.

Wow solitide. The more I read from former members of staff, the more I think KC is rotten to the core. Not in the sense that CB is corrupt and always intended it to be this way, but that CB is completely ill-equipped to run a charity and always has been.

expenditure on staff and quantity of staff will vary depending on what the charity provides. Presumably MacMillan spend a lot of money on nurses and water aid spends a lot of money on wells.

Whether that money is being spent sustainably or effectively requires closer examination.

Whether that money is being spent sustainably or effectively requires closer examination.

And if government money is involved, it requires that a comparison be drawn with other people delivering equivalent services. Private donors can give their money to whoever they like, and it's their responsibility to ensure it's being spent on things they deem worthwhile (although in general terms, it is good that the charity commission deal with obvious scams). It's not necessary that when I give money to charity A that I be confident that charity B couldn't do the job better.

But when tax revenue is being handed over, it's not enough for a charity to be well-meaning and honest (presumably that KC is both these things, which some anecdotes call into question). It's necessary that the charity spend the money at least as well, and preferably better, than statutory services, or some other charity, or indeed not spending it at all. It appears to be that which KC aren't showing. Getting uppity over that requirement is basically "won't someone think of the children".

Don't get me started on what Macmillan spend their money on

But yes, you would expect a hospice to spend a lot of money on staff as they need to employ doctors, nurses, health care assistants etc, quite a lot on building maintenance (no-one every wants to donate money for a new boiler), and also a smaller but significant amount on admin (employees need HR, health and safety, payroll) and also money on fundraising as you can't run a sizeable charity on volunteer bake sales.

Some staff might have £90000 salaries if that is the only way you can get those skills so I have no objection to a CEO being paid the going rate but there should be a clear justification for it.

Hospices are an interesting comparison, because their services involve a lot of 'love' as well as medical care. And all their patients die. Thing is, look at pretty much any hospice and you will find shitloads of testimonials from people whose friends or family members about how much the hospice provision helped, that there was kindness and emotional support as well as practical stuff.

Yet (again) something there has been a distinct lack of WRT Kids Company (which has, after all, been going for 20 years and allegedly helped millions of kids) is people coming forward to say that they went to KC in their troubled teenage years, got helped, turned their lives around etc.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11719428/Kids-Company-under-new-Charity-Commission-scrutiny-amid-fears-for-its-future.html

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11718694/Kids-Company-gives-out-flats-and-piles-of-money-to-teenagers.html

And if government money is involved, it requires that a comparison be drawn with other people delivering equivalent services.

I agree

Proving worth is a big issue for hospices outs self totally but any decent one will be able to show you numbers of patients in a year, length of stay, age/gender breakdown - really important to demonstrate fairness, number of families using the bereavement service etc etc. And for new services you would expect something like hospital admissions prevented or deaths outside of hospital or reduction in GP appointments so government could see they were getting some financial benefit to their investment.

I would expect that a troubled kids intervention would be able to come up with something similar such as number rejoining education, or reduction in convictions after joining programme. Or something - it isn't my area and these are just off the top of my head. But you will be able to find something to measure.

I work in mental health in the area where KC was set up. I have never met a clinician who has a good word to say about KC or CB, including those who have worked or volunteered there. A friend of mine who is a psychologist in CAHMS thinks her methods are downright dangerous. CB believes that by showing all children and young people unconditional love, they will heal. KC call it 're-parenting'. Part of this unconditional love involves never putting any boundaries in place. My friend had a patient who used to turn up at KC every week and steal money from other children. And the staff said nothing to her. There were absolutely no consequences for her behaviour. And I've heard loads more similar stories. Unfortunately, the outside world doesn't buy into the re-parenting model and she's spent the last 10 years in and out of prison.
I do think she means well but that isn't enough. All schools, health care providers, local authorities and charities are accountable for how they spend their money and whether the service they provide does what it's supposed to. KC is no exception.

Yes, I agree, Kundry, but the OP is vehement that measuring of this kind is a Bad Idea/Impossible/Not Relevant.

AndyWarholsOrange that would explain 98% self referrals - no other provider would recommend them/touch them with a bargepole!

So here's one of the "evaluations" linked to off the front page of the KC website [1].

It lists no author, date or other bibliographic information. It has no page numbers, making referencing difficult. It shows no evidence of being reviewed. It is, to judge from internal evidence, the unreviewed, unpublished research data from someone's PhD.

Parts of it defy belief. It claims to be comparing KC clients (interestingly, aged 16-24) to a "control group" matched for age and socio-economic status. It makes the dramatic claim that compared to this control, KC's clients "are 13 times more likely than control participants to have experienced severe to extreme levels of sexual abuse". But turning to Fig.2, we see the graph showing 0% sexual abuse in the control, 13% in the KC cohort. Given n=108, 0% means 0 cases.

First, zero times thirteen is not thirteen (and other figures in the graph fail to match the summary, too). Let's assume the figure is correct and the summary is wrong, however.

But secondly, how seriously are we to take a claim that a group of 16-24 year olds, matched for socio-economic status with KC clients, does not contain a single case of sexual abuse? And indeed, that only 2% (again, matched with KC's cohort) have experienced physical neglect? Those numbers don't pass a basic sniff test: they seem extraordinary compared to those quoted in Table 1 of [2].

Then it goes on to make detailed psychiatric claims about clients. 35% depression, 35% PTSD, 41% "dissociation" - the latter dramatically undefined, which given the high rate of dissociative experiences in the normal population seems a little odd. Again, this is unpublished preliminary work from someone's PhD, with no explanation as to who's doing the diagnosis.

And ladies and gentlemen, the coup de grace: While approximately 0.02% of the general population are thought to have a learning disability, this number is far higher amongst Kids Company clients, where 28% have been identified as living with a learning disability. Yep, we can deploy a new scepticism about SPLDs, as Kids Company claim that learning disabilities present in only 2 per ten thousand of the population, so the typical school will have at any one time a grand total of zero children with SPLD. This 0.02% claim isn't referenced (which is odd, given the welter of citations used elsewhere).

Mencap [3] reckons roughly 2%, one hundred times the rate the evaluation claims. Surely this evaluation can't have got confused between percentages and rates per hundred? 2% is 2 per hundred, not two per ten thousand.

[1] kidsco.org.uk/download/clients.pdf

[2] www.nspcc.org.uk/globalassets/documents/research-reports/child-abuse-neglect-uk-today-research-report.pdf

[3] www.mencap.org.uk/about-learning-disability/information-professionals/more-about-learning-disability

What is really frightening about this is how easy it is for an arrogant self-publicist to set up an organisation to 'help' vulnerable people, despite being untrained and relying on unprovable woo-bollocks and an ability to persuade everyone that s/he (men definitely do this sort of thing too) is 'wonderful' and doing 'wonderful work' with little or no evidence.
Of course, a lot of those in power or in charge of grants are partly to blame for letting it go on for this long - I can imagine that plenty of people were only too happy to believe in Wonderful Camila's Wonderful Woo if it meant they wouldn't have to take on these 'difficult' teenagers. And in a way, if the worst that happened was a few not-that-needy-actually kids self-referred and got some new X-boxes and ready cash, then that's not too bad in the long run (compared to the amounts MPs fiddled on their expenses, for example). But if vulnerable teenagers were attending and being subject to violence, abuse, misdiagnosis, extremely dodgy unproven therapies and being made worse than that's very worrying indeed.

It is scandalous that taxpayers money was being given to an organisation with very little proof of their attainments when organisations like women's aid were having funding slashed (although please correct if they weren't receiving government funds a I have a fuzzy memory).

Everyone I know who has wholeheartedly joined in with KC were very excited about it and enthused but after a couple of years went quiet on it and pulled away.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who start charities because they see it as a good way to fund their lifestyle and that's why good governance and oversight is key. (In not suggesting this is the case for cb)

Camilla Batmanghelidjh reminds me in so many ways of the nineteenth century 'childsavers' like Benjamin Waugh of the NSPCC or Thomas Banardo, gifted publicists able to get the ear of government and the money of donors who saw themselves as almost messianic figures who alone were capable of 'solving' the problem of child neglect.

Lol @ woo bollocks sgb

I used to work for a small local charity. We were funded by the local authority as well as private funders, BIG lottery fund and some donations. We had to report on outcomes for both Local Authority and the lottery fund. We supported about 4000 people annually.
Our clients group was a hard one to measure for improvement, how can a carers centre measurably improve the lives of carers when we can't provide equipment, respite, medicines etc. But we did show our impact, things like giving information, people self reporting that they felt less stressed or had enjoyed an outing were positive if short term improvements. If somebody was referred to our counselling, wellbeing or massage provision, we recorded details. Ages, sex, ethnic group.

Where we gave grants (max individual grant £200 per year) we either paid for an item directly, arranged for invoices to be sent to us or reimbursed the recipient. We never gave cash, it's too untraceable. Our funders would not have agreed to continue paying if we had no record of what we did, who we did it for and how it helped.

You can and should evaluate how many kids you are feeding! Because it should be informing your organisation's development, growth and future funding bids. I'd also have serious concerns about their ability to safeguard if they don't seem to have any service user records. How do they know that money isn't being taken by gangs/parents/unsavoury types to be used for drugs/debts/whatever and still leaving vulnerable children at risk. It's not news that young people are trafficked across Europe and from further afield. Roma children especially are often forced into begging. How do KC know they are not providing money which helps perpetuate abuse? They don't!

At the very minimum they should have some demographics, eg 27% of kids fromXX postcode, ages, sex. If they are providing therapy they have this information on that section of clients at least.
In terms of the kids they feed, they can even do a very simple headcount of number of boys vs girls etc and how often they present for dinner etc.
Its easy to create a database showing hoe many other organisations contact them for help and advice or to make a referral. If a charity with an annual income of less than £500k can manage it then KC could.

I think many people who influence funding - newspapers, politicians, celebrities - want to support a brand as much as they want to support a charity. Kid's company is vibrant, right on, and only understood by those in the know - how can Women's Aid compete with that?

Siobhan Sharpe from W1A would have a lot of positive things to say about Kid's Company.

want to support a brand as much as they want to support a charity

Indeed. It's much easier to get the kudos if your CSR report says "we support (charity everyone has heard of)" rather than "we support (charity few have heard of)".

Governments were really keen on A4E and their charismatic leader Emma Harrison too.

That went well didn't it?

At least that didn't last as long as Kids' Company and Camila Batmanghelidjh.

merrymouse sorry, but you are very naive regarding Kids Company. There have been major concerns about Cb and Kids Co for years, and those in the know, are all too aware!!

I thought it was clear from my post (and others) that kids company's brand is that they are a charity for those in the know - people who want to support 'real' and edgy projects.

Whether they are or not is another matter.

Just because you want to be seen to be in the know, doesn't mean you are!