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.

"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."

This, I reckon anyway, is the crux of the issue! KC probably is (quite rightly imho) more interested in the vulnerable children in her care above everything else.) And as stated before, what management boards and accountants deem "sucessful outcomes" probably bear very little resemblance to how I imagine CB and her clients would view them.

Sadly, very few individuals or organisations give funding nowadays without a multitude of strings or PR opportunities attached.

Once you have accepted funding, there is a whole PR dance that one has to engage in and of course, if the outcomes aren't quite as favourable as the donor or local press would like ....you can imagine the fallout. And who gets lost in the mire of all of this? The clients.

No one is disputing that public funding should be properly managed and accounted for, but imho, if KC is doing her job properly then I reckon that the vulnerable children in her care should be her main focus. Sometimes, according to my sister, you have to really fight to make sure that the end-users really are the priority in amongst all the other crap one has to contend with when keeping a charity afloat.

Perhaps CB has focused on the children to the detriment of everything else, but in the circumstances, I don't think that is the worst crime in the world.

northern so you want to interview disadvantaged/traumatised/abused kids, to justify that other disadvantaged/traumatised/abused kids, should continue to receive food

In answer to SolidGoldBrass yes, of course, but sometimes cash-strapped charities don't have the opportunity to be too choosy about who they tell to "fo" ifyswim.

Totally agree with your point

" 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."

The fallout of the Jimmy Saville case is that everyone is now hyper hyper sensitive to these issues, and yes, perhaps that is a good thing.

Harvey there are lots of ways to get feedback from young people in a positive way without adding to the misery.

There is a simple truth that some services are better than others, and often its small, underfunded groups that no-one has heard of that do brilliant work, where the kids have the support of dedicated, caring staff and volunteers.

I think CB is probably excellent at k owing what children need, the frontline stuff and the theoretical stuff. I think she is probably very poor at management and administration.

I'm a local authority social worker- the work I do is often frustrating for the very reason there is no clear "outcome" or measure to know things are better. But we are very much called on to be accountable for our work - my team manager gets a limited budget and we can't just spend it willy nilly. That means we have to make some difficult calls - not taking parents to medical appointments e.g. - but that is the real world. Money is not infinite! The other issue we are clear on is not paying for things which either a) another statutory agency has an obligation to fund or b) parents should be budgeting for. Very clearly- we are not hear to subsidise people spending their children's money on drugs or alcohol.
That said we (as a government agency and individuals) will never see a child go without. There isn't a worker in my team hasn't bought a child food, or toys, or clothes, or paid for a trip out of our own pockets . That is the reality of working with kids and doesn't confer some kind of halo over you! I also find the stuff about "love" insulting-I do indeed love the children I work with, especially those in care. I always remember their birthdays and give decent presents, go to parents eveninga, school plays etc. The "system" actually isn't all that bad.
On the matter of evaluating, we find ways to do it and so could she. Service user feedback for a start. And as others have said an independent evaluation is relatively cheap.
I have always thought the money given to KC would have been better put into proper children's services .

Harvey: the point is, if she's crap at organisation and admin, she has a moral and ethical duty to bring in people who are good at those things. And to listen to them. It is starting to seem as though the trouble the outfit is in right now is mostly attributable to her ego and reluctance to listen.

Harvey the problem with your model is that nothing changes. A bit like Africa and the criticism levelled at Band Aid.
Kids are propped up, kept fed, not asked any questions until the cycle starts again.
What needs to happen is an idea of moving to a goal and you can't do that without some evaluation.

It is nothing like Africa actually

The criticism of aid to Africa, is because governments rely on foreign aid. Therefore they are not invested enough in ensuring the population I working and paying taxes

There is no criticism to be made of food drops in drought stricken areas

See we disagree again.
Treating the symptoms not the cause.

if she's crap at organisation and admin, she has a moral and ethical duty to bring in people who are good at those things. And to listen to them.

This ^^

I work with vulnerable children near KC and we don't use them because the young people have been known to get cash handouts which are then sometimes not always used appropriately. This doesn't help the vulnerable young people, nor the ones who needed that money spent on food etc.

It's perfectly possible to ethically and appropriately get feedback on a service and assess it's benefts whatever the trauma the service users may or may not have undergone. The situation of the service users cannot be used to evade scrutiny. It's really striking that so many posters on this thread have professional experience in this area and are all saying the same thing.

So it appears that some people on this thread are happy for large amounts of government money to be given to what amounts to alternative medicine. "Well, those pesky trials are hard to stage, but we feel in our hearts that it's working and we are doing it for the right reasons".

If someone was treating cancer with homeopathy and getting three million quid from the government to do it, that they were well intentioned, honest, committed and dressed like a Sanderson's Wallpaper Catalogue wouldn't be enough: they would be asked to prove that they were, in fact, treating cancer, and that the three very big ones couldn't be better used at, say, the hospital next door.

The conspiracy stuff is completely unhinged. It's worth noting that CB has form on this: she was a big noise in the "satanic ritual abuse" debacle, which means her judgement with regard to child abuse needs to be treated with a certain caution.

motherinferior "I've always been deeply sceptical about CB; I've worked for enough charismatic nightmare charity leaders and the personality-based approach is v dodgy imo."

me too!

another poster mentioned about CB taking cabs/having a driver. same problem in places I worked. They "justified" it by saying they could work in the car but no, sorry, that was so expensive, it would have been better if they had just commuted in like the rest of us. In one case, the CEO would have been max 10 mins on the bus. Maybe he made one call in the cab or sent a few emails?

Charity as a whole needs scrutiny, but even more when they get so much government money. That said, I often find people bite my head off if I ask if they know how much of their donation is being put to good use. They have become good places to get high senior salaries.

Observer:

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/04/kids-company-row-reveals-charity-charisma-leader

What I find odd about all of this is the media investigation; the government announcement and the frenzied reporting (as well as the fairly numerous briefings from former staff members; parts of the government, etc).

The Government re-assesses funding for charities all the time. They regularly ask for more reporting; more robust auditing; better or simply different KPIs. It's not usually news.

From every report I've read the Government isn't even the main funder to KC so it seems as though it would have been feasible for KC to focus on its other funders (who will also have robust reporting structures and who aren't threatening to withdraw funding) and the Government could have directed the funds elsewhere. That's why the processes are there.

If the Government has funded an organisation that it thinks is mismanaged then that is the Government's responsibility. Briefing the media that the CEO has to go, feels like an attempt to both deny the Government's role in this and to unduly influence an independent organisation. Because the media frenzy had made it almost impossible for KC to announce they're keeping CB as CEO and relying on other funders from now on.

And I'm not saying CB should or shouldn't remain as CEO. I don't know. But I don't think she should have been crucified in the media the way she has been.

Briefing the media that the CEO has to go, feels like an attempt to both deny the Government's role in this and to unduly influence an independent organisation.

You aren't an independent organisation when a large portion of your funding comes from the state.

You are an independent organisation when you have a separate board, constitution, governance structure, etc.

Charities work with numerous funding organisations. Every funder has the right to robust reporting and auditing. If the government's processes fell down and if, as suggested in some of the articles, the PM intervened personally to ensure funding was delivered when there were misgivings about accountability, then that is a massive problem within Government funding and as such it's unlikely such oversights were limited to KC.

There are two possibilities here:

1. CB has ruffled too many feathers of those with influence and they want to silence her or curb her influence
2. CB's ego has exceeded her ability to manage efficiently

We will probably never know.

I am very cynical post-Saville, Hillsborough, Janner, etc. It is clear that the powers-that-be can manipulate things to suit themselves and, by the time we catch on, the guilty parties are dead or too elderly and infirm to pay the price (or claimed to be)

I think 1. is unlikely. If you have someone with poisonous information you want to hide, booting them out only works if they don't independently have a high profile. I'd have thought CB would be more dangerous to any cover up now.

The Guardian article seem to be saying that it came out as a result of FOI requests. So investigative journalism, rather than a leak?

What Kvetch said. Especially about it being a story.