Kids company - what a cock up!

[Northernlurker]

So I understand from the bbc that kc got the three million they were waiting for and which was given to support restructuring of the charity and promptly spent 800 grand of it on the months salary bill! What on earth were they thinking? Looks like it's totally done for now.

I don't know about 'documented outcomes' when it comes to this type of work. What would a positive outcome look like?

Basic data showing impact - eg
Number of clients entering work or education
Number of clients supported in parenting
Reduced reoffend rates within client group
Number of clients supported into accommodation
Number of clients participating in pilates classes (apparently something they offered) - then potentially number of clients training and qualifying as a pilates/fitness instructor - then number of classes delivered by those to new clients - etc

In 19 years of operation there should be some measurable impacts. If not then wtf were they doing?

Finding this all very interesting. Where were the trustees?

I don't know her personally but I know the type.

My dh knew her about 15 years ago.

And all that' you can't measure what we do with your boring fascist authoritarian numbers' should have rung alarm bells ages ago. Yes, it's difficult to prove exactly what any given intervention did for someone with MH problems but things like giving kids meals is easy to offer proof for - we bought this many loaves of bread, this many potatoes, this many tins of beans etc. Here are the receipts. Here are the chairs and tables where they eat. Something that seems to have come up is that claims of feeding 3000 kids breakfast were causing concern as, without distortion of the space-time continuum, there wasn't room for that many kids to sit and eat a meal in the course of a single week...

And my DS' dad works in the charity sector. I have asked him about this and he rolls his eyes and says 'no comment'. Mind you, his organisation also has a noisy. charismatic founder but a hard-headed team in place to handle the admin and keep said founder under some sort of control. Plus measurable outcomes...

And of course basic number if clients would also be useful ;)

One of the baffling thingsCB said in this afternoon's Radio 2 interview was that she said she thought David Cameron didn't like her because she spoke out against Government policy.

So that's the same David Cameron who appears to have over-ruled/ignored advice saying KC shouldn't be given more money?!

On the radio earlier a man from the council in Bristol said they were trying to plug the gaps left by the closure of KC but that it was proving very, very difficult to find out how many service users KC has. They estimated it was about 200 people in Bristol.

If you don't know how many people currently use your services how do you do your planning and forcasting for the following year? How do you know how much money each service needs?

What a sorry mess :(

They estimated it was about 200 people in Bristol.

www.kidsco.org.uk/bristol says we now operate out of six centres across the city. If you've got six centres, each presumably staffed, two hundred people being helped seems a bit thin, doesn't it?

And, note, We also offer nutritional meals a day (sic) and where necessary, a needs-tested living allowance. Leaving aside the missing word (presumably a number, which might be rather telling) this appears to be again "KC as shadow benefits scheme".

They might have 200 people in need of regular help and then more that attend on a drop in basis but I don't really know.

I've just read something that points out how much CB looks like Ronnie Barker and now I can't get it out of my head

If only Ronnie Barker were still here to do a CB skit! :o

Corbett could play Cameron.

Yes, the issue of the "allowances" seems odd. Why would public money go to distribution of cash in such a localised way? Are there no deprived areas outside London or Bristol where public money could be useful?

SGB no funder just wants to know how many kids you fed/trees you planted/hours of therapy you provided. They want you to tell them that that baked potato stopped them joining a gang, that planting that sapling directly halted global warming, that a 2 hour session of CBT made the bi-polar go away.

I work for a charity and am just delivering my 3rd Lottery project. I spend a huge amount of time collecting evidence of the work I do and the impact it has. One thing CB said yesterday that really resonated with me was the constant need to repackage what you do to make it sound new/exciting/even more impressive cause no one wants to fund the same thing twice - no matter how important or long-term the work you do is.

As for the financial side, I have to evidence every single penny I spend - both to my Trustees and my funders (you can't draw down a penny without a corresponding invoice). The charity is audited every year and submits accounts to the CC so I don't recognise the set up where money just pours in and gets spent willy nilly at all.

You probably don't recognise the set up where your PAYE bill is written off by HMRC either, but apparently the normal rules didn't apply to Kid's Company,

It's one thing saying that outcomes are difficult to quantify, quite another to be in such a perilous position financially that you have no idea how you will pay your staff.

All this 'giving out money' seems to be based in London, with offices in Bristol and Liverpool, afaik.

Their work in Liverpool would appear to consist of nothing more than an annual theatre workshop rather than intensive on-going work.

Barbarian - are your accounts 'audited' by auditors or verified by an accountant/other body?
And do you have to itemise every penny you spend to the CC or just generalised categories like 'Payments relating directly to charitable activities'
(like I said in Scotland and lower amounts) but I actually do a more detailed breakdown of income and expenditure mainly for our records/budgeting and they are the figures I use for the AGM - the Charity regulator doesn't want the same amount of detail - just wants the generalised information.
And I get also receipts/invoices for every penny spent but when they are being verified I strongly suspect that no-one actually checks every invoice is present...and for some things that are less straightforward than simply paying an invoice from an outside body I write an 'invoice' and get someone (2 trustees or the party receiving the payment) to sign it -but I could be making that up..signing random signatures...
They are all present - I cover my back - it is my reputation at stake. But I know I have 'upset' people by absolutely sticking to the rules -eg refusing to make payments without an invoice or using cash from a fundraiser to pay expenses/buy something without it going 'through the books' etc - I can see how easy it would be to bend the rules, to not have good procedures in place - especially if you started small and progressively got bigger.

The information you collect for the lottery funding...is anyone (apart from trustees) checking what you say is true? It is independent evidence or what you/your charity have provided?

I do absolutely agree to the 'new and exciting' for grants - ime very difficult to get grants purely for running costs - you need to create a good 'project' and to keep coming up with a new spin ...very tiring and trying.

Their work in Liverpool would appear to consist of nothing more than an annual theatre workshop

One could argue that it looks like increasingly like "theatre workshop" sums the whole thing up.

They spent £40m on having over packets of money to children and doing a load of homeopathic massage acupuncture woo bollocks. You don't need six hundred people and their on-costs to hand out cash at a window, so the main beneficiaries of that scheme are not the kids getting £30 a week but the staffers getting £300 a week. And the woo bollocks is entirely pointless. The people talking about all the wonderful work KC did: what exactly did that work consist of? Aside from handing out hash and engaging in woo bollocks, that is? Because it's looking increasingly like the rest of it was a Potemkin Charity: the claims about feeding don't add up, the claims about referral don't make sense, etc, etc.

Oh, and another thing. She is now claiming that in 19 years they didn't have a single child protection issue. What, with hundreds, nay thousands of hormonal teenagers who she herself claimed had been witnesses to appalling perversions and were damaged at a cellular level? Seriously? Not a single case? That's a bit fucking miraculous, wouldn't you say?

Aside from handing out hash

Cash, that is. But indirectly...

I used to have a budget for every restricted fund. I used to produce a statement of income and expenditure for each fund on a monthly basis which went to the project holder got. We knew how every fund was spent and each project holder had no excuse to overspend.

What, with hundreds, nay thousands of hormonal teenagers who she herself claimed had been witnesses to appalling perversions and were damaged at a cellular level? Seriously? Not a single case? That's a bit fucking miraculous, wouldn't you say?

She is either lying or kids company was utterly remiss in its child protection policies.

I'm sure I read somewhere that she also used to employ ex clients, which unless done with very rigourous procedures can be a disaster.

I'm sure I read somewhere that she also used to employ ex clients

So far, almost all of the staff interviewed claimed have been ex-clients. Which makes the seeming inability to trace outcomes for clients all the more mysterious.

I work for an educational charity. We are required to set 'learning outcomes' and required 'to evidence' that they've been achieved. It is essentially a box ticking exercise, but if, say, only ten out of twelve students fill in and return the form to say they've achieved the learning outcomes, we only get govt funding for ten, even if all twelve attended every session. I'm required to submit receipts for every bit of photocopying, or my expenses don't get paid. How the hell did KC get away with not setting measurable objectives and providing some kind of evidence that they were achieving them?

Guardian appears to be on the case. This is an account of obvious financial ineptitude, and Alan Botney is going to have some pretty serious explaining to do. What on earth were the trustees thinking of?

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/aug/06/kids-company-directors-were-warned-to-build-up-reserves

unlucky In england, charities over a certain size are externally financially audited, as was KC.