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.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/kids-company-charity-is-investigated-by-scotland-yards-child-abuse-sex-offences-and-exploitation-unit-10429093.html

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/31/police-search-kids-company-premises-over-abuse-allegations

I manage a tiny charity and our PAYE bill to the taxman is around £600 a month. if I 'forgot' to pay that they'd be on my back within a week! the financial irregularities here are quite terrifying

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3180482/Met-Police-s-child-abuse-unit-launches-investigation-Kids-Company-charity-historical-allegations.html

The police investigation was announced about a week ago:

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/30/met-police-launch-inquiry-into-kids-company-over-child-abuse-claims

As this was about the time of the breaking news of financial shenanigans, I have begun to wonder who exactly put the money mismanagement into the public domain. Because I expect quite a lot of people would have thought it was all connected to fraud. And not a potentially far more serious situation.

CB's latest line (Guardian this morning) is that the cabinet office knew that the money was destined for payroll. But it's self-serving bullshit, tellingly. She claims that they told the cabinet office that they needed the £3m to unlock a further £3m from a philanthropist in order to make payroll. That does not, in any world other than the woo-world, equate to either saying you intend to, seeking permission to or getting permission to spend the grant on payroll if (as was eventually the case) the philanthropist turned out not to exist withdrew their funding. The argument that as that didn't provide an immediate response forbidding use of the money for payroll they therefore had permission is insane.

You can't run a multi-million pound business by just wrapping yourself in your curtains and pretending to be a guru with magic powers. You need some process and governance.

I want to know what kind of 'auditing' was done. KC have claimed that their finances must be in order because they have been 'audited to death' (interviewee on R4 yesterday). However, either the audits weren't really very thorough and were just ticking boxes or they showed that KC was in financial chaos but it was politically expedient to ignore them.

At the moment it seems that the main value of KC was to politicians from all parties.

3 million was given a week ago?
And the auditing must have been well shoddy.
What a mess!

Not being able to pay your staff, as has clearly happened here, is a major sign of failure as an organisation.

However, either the audits weren't really very thorough

How on earth can a business hand out cash, unreceipted, and still pass audit? If you're handing out envelopes of cash to people you can't later produce to say "yes I had that cash", what stops the people doing the handing out just pocketing a few themselves?

Audit people get internal pains at the thought of businesses with large amounts of cash floating around.

There's also a great deal of deliberate obfuscation over the difference between financial audit, which is about the balance sheet and the cash (which should still have been problematic, see above) and audit of outcomes, in which someone actually measures whether the charity is successful in doing what it says it does. A charity which used donations to buy magic grass that made horses able to sing opera could pass financial audit, provided it was actually buying the magic grass and giving it to horses, but the audit to show the horses actually could sing Traviata would be more challenging.

She claims that they told the cabinet office that they needed the £3m to unlock a further £3m from a philanthropist in order to make payroll.

And how long were they going to last on £6 million with a payroll of £800k/month?

Equally, whatever the money was meant for, if they couldn't pay their staff they were never going to be able to spend the money on restructuring.

No wonder civil servants asked for a 'ministerial direction' before handing over the money.

How on earth can a business hand out cash, unreceipted, and still pass audit?

How does an organisation that claims not to understand PAYE pass audit?

Apparently CB had a salary of £100k p.a. so god knows what the staff got paid.

She's on "Today" in the ten past eight slot.

The loud noise of cars crashing, and Humphries doesn't appear ready to be taken in.

CB is on Radio 4 right now- JH giving her a real going over.

I worked for a similar type charity (ie part LA funded) and we were always being audited for this or that. We had to split the money into lots of pots of restricted funds and account each fund on a monthly basis. I just cant understand how they have got away with this shoddy accounting.

Oops sorry didn't see that ad already been pointed out

There are procedures laid down by the charity commission called SORP

CB doing well against JH. She is using the usual guilt-tripping style progressive arguments that the liberal elite roll over for and have no answer to and talking about "youngsters self-referring" etc and then she is rightly saying how come the government audited them and passed them off as fine for many years.

Apparently our taxpayer money was used to fund two full-time civil servants to work with Kids Company to secure funding and she says after a year they left without securing " a penny".

What a waste of public money. Who is supposed to be looking after public spending?

Disability benefit cuts and the bedroom tax meaning people having to move home and we create jobs for civil servants who "look for funding" for "self-referring youngsters" and large "case loads".

What a load of bollocks. Where are the Sex Pistols when we need them?

She essentially accused the BBC, and in fact a named BBC journalist, of paying people to give fake interviews. That doesn't strike me as the best way to get support, given that the BBC should in theory be the sort of luvvy-central where here shtick works best.

The metropolitan elite used ATOS to screen disability benefit claimants with all the mistakes that that led to, and yet for "self-referring youngsters" they send civil servants down to help them, all taxpayer funded, and the "audits" leave a lot to be desired it seems.

Then they show us "staffers" and their mates and kids of 6 shouting on TV about the disgrace of taxpayer funding being finally shut off, and we just look on and say "plus ca change ... just another day of metropolitan madness with our taxpayer money".

Everyone raves about her. But she doesn't cut it, with me. I can't take to her, at all.

'That doesn't strike me as the best way to get support'

She doesn't need support. The entire metropolitan elite fell over themselves in their eagerness to support her and her charity with out taxpayer money for years. Now she is rightly asking them why they did that then, and why they have suddenly all changed tune now.

They are pointing the finger at Kidd Company but she has turned it round on them and is pointing the finger right back at them.

omg, did anyone hear CB just now on Radio 5 live?
She said

1. there are sexual abuse allegations to be broadcast on TV but they don't know what they are so they can't respond, no fair &

2. Any allegations of sexual abuse are categorically untrue.

How can she not see the contradiction of those statements?!!

As she said on the BBC interview, she is not "servile" and that is why she may end up blowing the whole taxpayer funding of the "third sector" and what some people call the "charidee" sector sky high.

There must be panic in elite circles that CB won't go down without a fight and without pointing the finger at those who funded her and are now dropping her.