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.

How much research was done on the self-referral? If no records are kept and no studies done, how do we know they were children in need?

I, along with most of us I guess, would have been interested to know whether that approach could have worked in the long term

Which would require long-term follow-up work, which was one of the many things that CB regarded as beneath her. 19 years, and no long-term evidence of what happened to people. How did she know that what she was doing benefitted anyone? This is the stuff of homeopathy: "well, they all said it made them better, and who am I to argue?"

They had no money because they were financially irresponsible and had poor governance, but also because of demand and their policy of not turning away self-referrals.

If you open a shop which will give fifty pounds to everyone who turns up, you need an essentially infinite source of funds. She didn't have an essentially infinite source of funds.

Thanks for that most interesting link Gemauve

I was particularly taken by this statement:

Camila admits that her only fault was that she couldn’t raise enough funds to meet the growing levels of need and that the model she developed is ahead of its time.

She takes absolutely no responsibility for anything. Breathtaking arrogance.

I'm an affluent mumsnetter from a six figure household (outside London). My fifteen year old gets £40 a month in cash.

the model she developed is ahead of its time.

That's every nutter's excuse. I wonder if she has a perpetual motion machine that just requires a few more modifications?

Tangential, but I found it interesting

Being ahead of one's time seems to run in the family. Ditto woo-bollocks.

I'm not an affluent MNer.

DS gets 50 pounds a month from school.

the model she developed is ahead of its time.

That only adds to CB's irresponsibility in making her model so discredited by such terrible financial mismanagement.

I've had enough contact with charities to be wary of all their inherent problems - and CB does seem to have an extreme version of founder syndrome, with a side order of messiah tendency (just seen her appearance at Downing Street on the 6pm news). The waste of money, lack of accountability makes me fume - don't like the notion of Cameron's quango-tastic Big Society one little bit. In my opinion, the state should take primary care of its vulnerable citizens so, have half been enjoying (if I'm honest) the fall-out.

However, a friend became a mentor for KC a few years ago. She's very switched on and had had periods of time in care herself. She asked permission to give her mentee a Kindle for the girl's 17th birthday. Was told by KC that it was too expensive and might be sold. For her 18th birthday, she was allowed to give her mentee a year's cinema pass - because it was a significant birthday. Huge success (girl had been agoraphobic and it got her travelling around London) and temporarily away from poor family situation. Now the mentee is heading off to university this autumn.

So, possibly there were some really good keyworkers who knew handing out cash was a bad idea, who have really helped vulnerable kids with non-woo methods, and because of dreadful management, that's all gone because of rampant egotism and accountancy's-for-little-people...

I absolutely see the appeal of providing warmth and security for children who haven't experienced either, but in practice doing this isn't straightforward - otherwise the problems of any adopted or fostered child could be solved by hugs and love.

There might be all sorts of reasons to justify handing out cash to children - but the government can't
fund a shadow benefits system.

The feeling in some quarters seems to be that KC's activities should have been completely funded by government - but how? A government organisation could not look like kid's company.

I have a friend who works with vulnerable children in a deprived area. Her FB status today was along the lines of 'thank fuck they've shut it down.' She said that one of the biggest problems she saw was that KC staff not only had few boundaries, but they encouraged children to see everyone else as the enemy.

What seems to me one of the worst aspect of this woo-bollocks unconditional love approach (as I keep saying) is that there appear to have been no procedures in place to stop the children hurting each other. Disturbed/abused/mentally ill children will resort to violence sometimes. If the centre they are attending is open (as opposed to one-to-one appointments) it's absolutely essential that the bigger, stronger, more aggressive ones are prevented from hurting the smaller, weaker ones. And CB's 'revolutionary' approach appears to have depended entirely on her magic powers; even if she was unusually good at getting distressed young people to respond to her, that's not a functional model for a large organisation unless you can train other people to carry it out as well as there simply isn't enough time for one person to cure the world with her stupid clothes magic fingers.

I don't know what to make of this really.
It seems odd to have offices in the City when the charity was running in Southwark - surely plenty of cheaper offices there!

The charity i worked for had offices in The City. The lease was donated for 10 years. When it ran out they moved

The national branch of the charity I work for also has a 'donated' office in central London. Maybe the donor gets a tax write-off or something - it's not an unusual arrangement.

i work (ed) in the industry too and was confused about just what kidscompany did. it's a small industry really and i couldn't understand why the never got involved with conferences etc. i did try to find out where and how they got such good funding when i was setting up my own organisation but it was like wading through treacle, just nothing to research.

shame really when i think of how many organisation have closed in recent months who could have probably thrived with a share of that funding.

Interesting article here In particular this part: "But the telling thing is that the collapse of Kids Company was not because the applicable regulatory regime “failed”. In fact, the applicable regulatory regime did all it could: the accounts of Kids Company were audited and published (but the right people did not appear to read them with any care), and the Charity Commission was in the process of dealing with complaints (albeit only recently, it seems). Even the emergency government grant that it received went through the appropriate channel, with a published “direction” by two senior ministers. This is not a system “not working”; it is a bad system working. This is what “light-touch regulation” looks like in practice.

You cannot get away with saying the problems with Kids Company can only be seen with “hindsight”. The charity’s own Annual Report for 2013 is alarming reading, if you look at the detail rather than the glossy distractions and expensive photography. For example, the charity states that it spent £15m on salary costs in 2013 (p 55); but it can only document 750 children who it helped (p13). Of course, the organisation claims to have helped many more than that, and there is no doubt that it did; but when it comes to hard verifiable data, the ratio of cash to beneficiaries is worrying. And this was in 2013; one can only wonder what the state of its finances were by 2015."

One of the issues that does seem to be knocking about in the background here is the possibility that KC simply wasn't helping nearly as many children as they claimed ie that lots of money was being spent on staff who were spending most of their time twiddling their thumbs as children were a) not being referred there by professionals who knew the place was a disaster b) only turning up once a week for their cash handouts or c) going once and never returning because the bigger kids beat them up and/or they found the staff themselves either scary or unhelpful.

One of the issues that does seem to be knocking about in the background here is the possibility that KC simply wasn't helping nearly as many children as they claimed

fullfact.org/factcheck/education/kids_company_36000_helped-47069

Thanks for that very enlightening link Gemauve.

Hope you don't mind, but I've just reposted it on the 'Isn't CB wonderful thread', where the discussion has moved on from her wonderfulness.

Well I guess all the facts will come out in the end.

But in the meantime, I'm genuinely intrigued as to why quite a few people on Mnsnet invest much time posting with a fair degree of vitriol and (unless you have close up and personal knowledge) what can only be supposition about a woman who has tried to do her best for others; even down to criticising her clothes.

You'd think she was a war criminal fhs!

And now it emerges adult children of one of the trustees were on the payroll:

Mail link

Whole thing stinks even harder.

And now it emerges adult children of one of the trustees were on the payroll

And you're surprised because...?

Opaque charity with luvvies at the helm. Of course their own children are more deserving than the little people's.

I didn't say I was surprised and I'm not.

CB has very much been the lady who protests too much since the collapse. I think what's emerged so far is the tip of the iceberg and there's lots more where it came from.

why quite a few people on Mnsnet invest much time posting with a fair degree of vitriol and (unless you have close up and personal knowledge) what can only be supposition about a woman who has tried to do her best for others

If CM were a well meaning person running a small youth centre in East London she wouldn't be in the news. I wouldn't particularly care if she were just running Coldplay's pet project as long as she was doing no harm - it's up to them how they spend their money.

The problem is the amount of money that seems to have been diverted towards KC by government against better advice and seemingly as a PR exercise.

Kids Company has been portrayed as the way forward when minimal scrutiny would show that, even leaving aside child protection issues it was not offering a sustainable service.