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.

Well it was also in the news because (and I know the precise figures have yet to be established) because they had multiple projects running in multiple locations helping multiple children. The scope of the charity was large.

Imo that still doesn't justify criticising her clothes, or saying the whole thing was a PR exercise, or criticising her motivations when none of us can possibly know what they are.

The point I was try to make is that there seems to be more vitriol aimed at her than the people who are really responsible for the current inequalities in society. Even if things have gone badly wrong administratively, she has directed a large floodlight at the issues in hand (one of which is the woeful lack of child mh provision) and at least she tried to help.

Surely the vitriol should be reserved for those members of society who just walk on by?

And to pick up on Tensmumym's point: about the applicable regulatory systems being poor - I agree

Particularly with regard to charitable boards which are made up (usually) of very well intentioned but busy people who already have one or more full-time jobs. In my experience, they don't usually have the time or inclination to really delve in to the nitty gritty issues of a charity and its administration. The system itself is faulty.

People should not criticise her appearance.

However, Kids Company has definitely been used by politicians to generate PR for themselves.

It has been clear for a long time that kids company lacked the financial management to continue, yet money was still handed over, while drastic cuts have been made to public services.

You don't need to delve into the nitty gritty of an organisation to notice that PAYE isn't being paid or that the charity spends all income immediately.

We're on the same page there Merrymouse

Don't think CB should bear responsibility for governments inadequacies in this area and indeed, she would argue that having been in receipt of all this funding and good PR, she then had the nerve to turn around and challenge the present gov's policies and woeful provision, and this is why she has found herself in this mess in the first place.

I don't know for sure though so wait with interest to find out the real facts of the matter.

You'd be surprised! (About the nitty gritty point.) The small local charity that someone I am close to took over, had got themselves in to a terrible pickle with employee pay admin over a period of five years, they had not had one fire drill in that time, nor had their kitchens been inspected for hygiene. And they had what everyone would assume was a very 'engaged' active board.

Any small charity or business might get into a muddle with payroll (although they would have to bear the consequences).

It's not so understandable that a charity with a £23 million turnover and a trustee (Andrew Webster) who had been Vice President of HR at AstraZeneca should struggle with employment taxes.

If the people on the boards don't have the time or inclination to delve into the nitty gritty of what they've taken on and are accountable for I'd have thought they should be giving their position serious consideration even if only on the grounds that they can become personally liable in certain instances.

I am still waiting to hear any praise for the civil servants who tried to stop taxpayers money being misused by this charity. The ministers overruled their very legitimate concerns about accountability and value for money.

KC is £4m+ in the red, has no Reserves, and for the past 5 years has either barely brown even or been overspent. This is hardly the behaviour of a responsible organisation.
Having spent an extortionate amount of money (£25m?) in 4 months, just where the hell was the money going?
What makes me mad is that other charities working with children would never have got away with what appears to be blatant mismanagement so why this one? It isn't even as if it's delivered the goods as no reliable and verifiable statistics exist!
The Annual Reports give no indication of activity, throughput or outcomes, it's disgraceful IMO.

Apparently they are also being investigated for paying the school fees of staff members children , all very sad

Yes, a lot of the wailing and 'how dare they close KC down?' letters in newspapers seem to be from staff rather than, er, children who were actually helped. It was probably quite a cushy job for untrained, well-connected graduates...

Just had a look at the school fee story and it seems the child at the centre of the allegations is CB's chauffeur's daughter, the chauffeur being on the charity's payroll. WTAF.

Just had a look at the school fee story and it seems the child at the centre of the allegations is CB's chauffeur's daughter, the chauffeur being on the charity's payroll.

One of the trustees at the school in question is a trustee of KC. That raises the question of whether the scholarship is, in fact, a benefit in kind of employment with KC, and therefore taxable (a scholarship isn't of itself isn't taxable; a discount on fees for an employee of a school can be).

Interesting article in the Times Higher Ed about the fact that KC paid for the flattering LSE report on them that CB and her defenders have cited as impartial evidence that KC was doing great work: London School of Economics was paid £40,000 for glowing report on Kids Company. Not surprised by this: as soon as I heard the report had been produced by the university that accepted £1.5 million from Libya immediately after passing Gaddafi's son's plagiarised PhD, I wondered if money had changed hands.

I wonder if it'll eventually turn out that the many tens of millions, if not more than £100M, has actually being spent to get CB troubled kids as friends and to make the world at large, but most particularly the great and the good, view her as a saint.

There's so much that stinks about this.

The urban academy that KC had in south London used to be owned by Sherborne school (v posh public school both camila B and chris Martin of Coldplay attended). They shut it down then KC bought it.

More revelations in today's Mail on Sunday:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3199528/Camila-s-private-swimming-pool-luxury-mansions-paid-Kids-Company-Children-used-5-000-month-home-banned-using-facility.html

IF what the Mail says is right, this looks less like financial incompetence and more like misappropriation of funds. I wonder if the police will be called in.

Good Lord, hackmum. Naturally one should treat allegations published in the Mail with a degree of caution, but even if only a couple of them are true (and KC seem to have confirmed that they were indeed spending 5-figure sums on clients in their 20s and 30s) that is very telling indeed.

I agree, Irene. Like a lot of people, I'm not a fan of either the Mail's politics or its ethics. But sometimes they do produce good investigative journalism, and with a story like this they'd have to be very careful of making allegations that were potentially libellous.

How can they justify having clients in their 20s and 30s when their name is Kids Company. Did they not have any sort of official charter detailing what their remit was?

I mean, obviously not, but they should have.

I can quite see that they wouldn't want to cut off support abruptly at 18 or even 21, but they should definitely have had a a policy for gradually signposting clients to different sources of support past a certain age. I'm sure Centrepoint e.g. do.

Has anyone posted this gem from the Grauniad in 2012 yet? It's from "Time Management Tips from extremely busy people"...

"Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder of Kids Company company:
"Seven PAs keep me going around the clock. It starts at 8am, and finishes about 12am. I dictate everything while playing with toy helicopters, remote-controlled cars and plastic spoons. At night, I go home carrying a multicoloured laundry bag full of papers, filed in a manner incomprehensible to everyone – including myself. So I hold tight a little book full of lists, which I add to at 4am. My joy is to use a felt-tip and colour out completed tasks."
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/may/04/time-management-tips-busy-people

In retrospect perhaps not very confidence inspiring coming from the CEO of a multi-million pound charity...

It's funny, isn't it - looking back at that time management quote, you think: WTAF? Seven PAs? A total lack, by her own admission, of filing skills?

Why didn't that raise eyebrows at the time? I suppose it's the same kind of thing as Jimmy Savile hinting at some fairly dodgy admissions in his autobiography, but somehow no-one twigging.

I suspect that the Charities Commission will end up bringing the police in. Not because money is missing but because if the Mail story is accurate it sounds like it's been spent outside the aims of the charity and therefore outside the law.....and the Mail story will definitely have been seen by their lawyers before publication so they must be happy it will stand up.