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.

Here's the thing, if you accept money from a donor stating that you are going to achieve x as a result of having the money, then yes, it is completely and utterly correct for the donor to question it if you a) don't achieve it b) don't provide evidence.

You can actually provide Christmas dinner for as many people as you like without any questions. Some widow paid for a bunch of lonely people to have Christmas dinner last year - the government didn't care.

It's only when you take other people's money that there's an issue. The cabinet office aren't closing KC: they have said that under the current leadership, they are not prepared to provide any further funding. KC is completely free to find and accept other funding with their current leadership.

There will have been a lot of warnings before the CO went public - this hasn't happened without notice and a lot of discussions. Camilla and Alan Yentob are too high profile.

top post book.

If you run a charity you only get funding on the basis that x or y is achieved and a lot of what KC achieves is, by its very nature, unquantifiable. That doesn't meant it isn't worth doing.

How do you "measure" suicide prevention exactly? The child concerned may not go on to 'succeed' in life by everyone's else's definition of the word, but for them, simply existing is an achievement. (This may sound over-dramatic but I am using a rl example from my sister's charity.)

Obviously, they need a robust accounting system and all funds received need to be accounted for, but the very nature of the end-user she is dealing with makes "effectiveness" very difficult indeed to quantify.

It's evident on Mumsnet sn threads how much parents contribute in terms of endless meetings with mental health services, statementing, teachers, doctors etc (aside from parenting) the task is difficult and seemingly never-ending.

Imagine the fate of a child with sn with no supportive parents (who is by definition more likely to have mh issues precisely because of its particular circumstances).

CB has made herself unpopular with the establishment because her approach is unusual. She initially tried to help children whose parents were unable to bring them to therapeutic appts. Then she helped children who self -refer: that in itself leads to funding difficulties because they do not come under the umbrella of any particular body.

She has talked about 'love' and lack of love in the care system - something no one wants to here - but is fundamental to a child's development.

She has also re-mortgaged her own flat twice in order to keep the charity going in its early days - so to call her a rich hypocrite is totally out of order.

I don't claim to know whether the accusations against CB and KC are correct or not - I sincerely hope they are not - and there are obviously many people on here who have more direct knowledge than me.

But I think it's easy to sit in front of the computer and criticise someone who has, for 19 years, sincerely tried to make a difference.

But as I said above Steady, the question the CAbinet office have to answer is why £3m to kids co against x charity - which could include your sisters charity. Nobody disputes need. Nobody has disputed the intent of KC. But presumably KC signed the grant agreement about what should be measured and therefore thought they would achieve them.

I think the biggest problem is that KC's methods, at least in CB's eyes, depend very heavily on the magical, special, healing powers of CB herself. Not only is that going to lead to sloppy accounting (I am not suggesting CB herself has been embezzling) but it's also a thoroughly unsustainable way to run a help service, simply because there are only so many hours in the day for the Great Leader to be able to touch the afflicted and heal them.
So once you get beyond a small organisation working mainly via word of mouth (which can and do exist and turn lives around in some cases) the effectiveness of the Magic Touch is diminished, unless the person who has it is both willing and capable when it comes to teaching other people how to perform the procedures.

I also had the impression that the 'unconditional love' method might make it pretty rough for the smaller, weaker kids who went there if the bigger, stronger ones were still in the stage of dealing with their own genuine trauma and distress by kicking the shit out of anyone who didn't fight back, with no sanctions because, unconditional love for troubled teens.

Furthermore I do have sympathies with the issue of measurement - however I have yet to see KC produce any evidence which I would consider suitable. For what it's worth, I worked in international development for four years with 42 major donors so I do know the difficulty. But 5% of £4m would actually pay for a decent evaluation.

I do think CB has done great things but she has chosen a model of working which has its own challenges - in this case asking the govt (or us, as taxpayers) to supply some of the funding. That changes things.

I would disagree that she has made herself unpopular because of her approach to working with children. On the contrary I think the tragedy here is that she has actually had huge influence with MPs, which she has often put to very good use for the benefit of thousands of children.

CB has made herself unpopular with the establishment
But she hasn't, or at least she hadn't - David Cameron aparently thought she was amazing, she was awarded a CBE, there are pictures of her sitting at the Cabinet table. She's not some lone crusader fighting a hostile establishment, she's someone who has had the ear, the sympathy, and the cash of the most establishment figures in the country.

And good for her, if she's using that sympathy and that money productively. But there seem to be rather a lot of questions about that and rather than address them, the response from CB has been to blame everyone else - donors who ask questions are mentally ill, a government that wants to know how our money is being spent is engaged in a conspiracy to silence her, former volunteers are disgruntled and therefore unreliable. It's worrying because although I've not seen her good intentions called into question by anyone, all of this - the huge sums of money seemingly not properly accounted for; the inconsistent accounts about how money has been spent; the dominance of a charismatic founding figure; the apparent hostility towards anyone who asks any questions - follows a very familiar and unfortunate pattern.

I get it that people want to know that the money is being spent effectively. But there are numerous areas of their work where that is simply bloody obvious.

As others have said, funding is still on the table if CB steps down as CEO and KC is free to fundraise from other sources. I suspect a big reason for asking CB to change her role within the company he is that this is emergency funding which implies that KC isn't sustainable as it is run at the moment.

Put like that I can see you have a point FatherRebola

Sorry (not well expressed) I meant she has made herself (a) unpopular with the state agencies who provide similar services because of her working methods and (b) she is making herself unpopular with the government now because she is constantly flagging up the fact that state provision for Child and Adolescent Mental Health services are woeful (despite having received gov funding previously). Her point is that the futures of these vulnerable children should not be dependent on unpredictable charity funding when the sustainability of the funding is constantly in question.

"But presumably KC signed the grant agreement about what should be measured and therefore thought they would achieve them."
In answer to this point above, I totally agree, but sometimes the realities of these situations means that the outcomes are not measurable in precise terms, or are not entirely in accordance with the ideas of those providing the funds.

Also agree that it is possible that whole shabang depends too heavily on CB herself but still think it is a shame that she comes in for a shed-load of criticism when the really problem is that of inadequate state provision.

I think this also shows why big society was not a brilliant idea.

Everyone has been banging on about the paucity of CAMHS for decades.

So, basically people are happy to see poor kids fed AS LONG AS xyz...

Nice

CB has not been pocketing the money herself. That's not the question mark

She spent it on the kids. But not in the way that observers think I should be spent??

Tbf what the fuck, do the government know about what those kids need

*So, basically people are happy to see poor kids fed AS LONG AS xyz...

Nice*

Yes, because then more poor kids can be fed. Boring, but nice.

There are 3 kids on our street, that would regularly get home from school to fond no one at home, no electricity on the meter, no food, no money. They would come to mine, I would feed them, wash their uniform, let them watch tv for the evening, give them a bed for the night, feed them breakfast, give them dinner money and send them off to school. 1 of them was expelled from our primary for ongoing bad behaviour, cumulating in punching the SENCO

I don't see them much anymore, they are 12 and 11 and pretty much able to take care of themselves/not scared any more

That is pretty much what is needed on a grand scale.

Therapies and interventions are great and their aspirations and self esteem need raising. But not as a proviso for safety and food. They don't want to be bothered and questioned all the time. They don't always need a space 'to do homework' and 'i.prove themselves'. They just need a place to chill the fuck out, where they are not being shouted at, or hit and they aren't scared or having to live up to some reputation

The problem is that it is very difficult to organise that on a grand scale without looking at things like efficiency and outcomes. For a start if the government were paying people to do that they would need to be cbt checked and somebody would have to check whether the people you were helping were those most in need.

There is nothing wrong with helping people, but when you want £3 million from the government you have to show that you are the best person to receive that £3 million.

But that isn't what Kids Co themselves were saying. They state on their website about attainment and aspiration.

And no one has said that there isn't a need and that this doesn't need funding. Just where?

The electorate voted for austerity and paying off the debt in a recent election. The electorate have said their priority is paying off the debt and helping people keep their wealth than supporting need. Nobody including the government is denying there is need. Albeit redefining child poverty is quite an interesting way to do so. The next budget will decrease inheritance tax and reduce benefits. Health and social care are in dire straits.
That is what the government got the mandate to do so: the cabinet office is merely doing what the elected officials are instructing them.

Harvey Spectre: but if you are doing that en masse (ie in a community centre hall) you do also need to make sure that the kids are supervised so the bigger ones are not bashing the crap out of the little ones. (Or, indeed, that the occasional small one with severe issues isn't mullering the ones who are big but timid...).
This has always struck me as a big potential problem with the KC 'just give them love' approach, and there seem to be quite a few reports confirming that this, along with the inefficient money management, is true.

And poor money management isn't just the idea that people working for the organisation are pocketing funds (again, this doesn't seem to be the problem with KC). If you are a charity using donated money, using it well also includes things like getting the best value in terms of (eg) building work, equipment, even food and not just accepting the first supply quote you are given because the potential supplier's got the right star sign, or knows your mum or something.

But the point is that there are limited funds to go round and the money must be spent effectively...

No-one is saying that services like KC should not exist, only that there are other people providing these services in a variety of local contexts.

By analogy, if you have a budget of £100 to feed a family of four for the week, do you shop at Tesco, Marks and Spencer or Aldi? You might stick with the one with good adverts, or you might look online to do a price comparison. Or you might shop at Waitrose because the Jones's shop there.

Funders wanting to bring about social change or alleviate social issues have many options and have to have a way of choosing.

A much more pertinent question for me is why the govt isn't making more funds available to charities in general - there have been so many cut backs alongside an increase in demand.

CB has not been pocketing the money herself
No-one, anywhere, has ever suggested that they think she has.

I find the idea that we shouldn't be asking questions about how millions of pounds of taxpayers' money had been spent - even though people previously involved in the organsiation and, apparently, one person who donated £200,000 of her own money, are asking those same questions - really, really odd. Why should CB and KC be exempt from scrutiny, or from questions when things don't seem to add up?

I don't believe the outcome of this type of work defies description. Whether it's through interviews describing experience and quality or through stats you can show if something makes a difference. The impression I'm getting that KC isn't too interested in that. That's not acceptable tbh. If you're spending public money you HAVE to be able to show that you've spent it on something with a purpose and a positive result. Which is why I don't think we should fund Trident

They should not be exempt from scrutiny. No one is saying that either.

I just personally think that that the level of antagonism/criticism levelled at CB (who, as you say, is not being accused of pocketing funds herself) by some (not all) posters and by some individuals in the press, is completely out of proportion given that she has spent 19 yrs at the coal face helping vulnerable children.

And (again) according to my sister who manages a charity, the reality is that not all helpers, volunteers, and donors are completely issue-free; they are often quite difficult and have their own agendas, sometimes the clients are a lot easier to deal with!

Steady: But when their issues are starting to impact too heavily on the people they are supposed to be helping, then they need to be told to either sort themselves out or fuck off. Again, it's wholly understandable that people who want to help others may be driven by an agenda that is (eg) recovering from their own traumas, needing to feel needed and worthwhile after being neglected or whatever. But we know now (at least we certainly fucking ought to) that masses of charity work doesn't and should never, ever, anyway, make a person untouchable or immune to question and criticism.

Well, no...no one on this thread has discussed an alternative provisions at all. How that might work, what they should offer. How the kids might change from well established provision to trusting a new one?

Or, what specifically KC and/or CB has done wrong...for what purpose or how that might be catered for 'more efficiently'

All I seem is people sticking the boot in and gurning on about measurable outcomes, in really vague terms

I dare you all to go and spend a week volunteering with kids company, or similar. Then come back with some opinions