Can we talk about Camilla Batmanghedjh?

[HarveySpectre]

Everywhere I look, she is getting totally crucified. Including on MN chat.
I don't get it. Even if she has been bad at financial accounts, she has still done amazing work for kids, for the last 19 years.

People are saying the money could have been 'better spent'. What the fuck do they know about what those kids need??

People are calling for measurable benefits I.e. Improved exam results, employment, reduction in offending/criminal activity. You cant link those things to whether a child should be fed! There is no 'measure of improvement' to providing basic need

To my mind KC thought outside the box and catered for those that absolutely needed help the most. You cant always do that effectively, by conventional methods

I agree about Bob Geldof, SGB.

It is incredibly sad that there is so much corruption and incompetence in the voluntary sector.

I don't think this is even that unusual a situation - multiple staff (the ones who actually work with the clients) leaving due to incompetent management and not being listened to when they point out the problems.

Accurate records are how clients and workers can hold organisations accountable for how they have been treated.

A lot of this would be prevented if there was better Union representation, unions getting support in not letting managers be in the same Union as their workers (something managers frequently try to undermine) and better whistle blowing policies.

It reminds me of the issue with section 28 still existing in academy policies because policy writing had been outsourced once the LEA was not providing that service to academies.

Cameron's insistence on dismantling the public sector in favour of 'local' power and the voluntary sector was a recipie for diversifying corruption and incompetence. Ethical voluntary sector organisations pointed out the problems from the start.

Buffy

That may be true, but may not. Even if the charity has not achieved what the government wanted/measured, surely it should be able to show how it has used the money and how it has helped kids. This is necessary when spending our money. The annual report states:

Measuring the true impact of Kids Company’s intervention is not possible. Society has not developed evidencing tools which capture the potency of hope, the rekindling of imagination and returning children to dignity. So we are left with some inadequate measures which at best describe our output
and capture aspects of our outcomes.

There then follows some outcomes for 750 children - not a great number for a charity spending £20m a year.

So, even after 18 years, they have no idea if what they do makes any difference or whether the outcomes could be delivered better or more cheaply.

Buffy I agree there needs a to be a balance found between accountability and control but for some charities accountability is easier than others isn't it? And perhaps that's where KC had trouble ( for the little I know about it) For example a charity based on sexual health, is easier to quantify than one focusing on children poverty l.

Sigh. There are some very cohesive arguments on the other thread.

Why did you start this thread OP?

But if people are running a charity that's not just financially incompetent but might be doing the opposite of helping the people it's supposed to help, then there should be an investigation in to what's going on. If the megastar founder's response to questions is to shriek and howl about persecution, and the only answers available are from the founder and the founder's friends and focus on the wonderfulness and specialness of the founder and how the founder's magic powers will make everything all right somehow then that's not good.
If (for example) the 'unconditional love' approach of Kids' Company means that these troubled kids are kicking the shit out of each other due to poor supervision and a rejection of 'authoritarianism' then a lot of needy kids will not attend because they are scared of the violence.

CB has had a free hand for almost 20 years so I'm not hugely inclined to accept it's the big nasty government stifling her ideas.

I had wondered a while ago what Kids' Company did and it all seemed very nebulous. Carol made some good points.

I'm not convinced the fact some local authorities refer children to them is proof they are any good.

She is not 'getting crucified': she was, however, getting sanctified till last week, and appeared v much (certainly when I've been at events where she's been receiving awards) to be revelling in her sainthood. You'd be hard-pressed to find any open criticism of her whatsoever before that point.

I like SGB's post. Succinctly put.

Mide - how on earth is it easier to measure sexual health to poverty?

Sexual health is long term, involves complex and often taboo subjects, and mostly is done in private. And has a certain element of chance- person a sleeps around and doesn't get pregnant/ STI person b has one accident with a condom and ends up with HIV.

How on earth is it easier to measure? There are loads of measures of poverty - Joseph Rowntree has done loads of work, Scotland government have done loads of work. Other charities do it. Measurement may not be absolutely perfect but you can do enough to provide evidence that what is being done is good.

There are lots of very worrying accusations eg teenagers arriving with knives at the centres and scaring other smaller children. If food can be provided to the same number of children, but without the permissive culture which says that is ok, I'd say that would be a better way of doing it, op. And maybe other charities that can do it better should be funded instead.

it's quite simple really, thanks to the Guardian and its FOI request results.

KC has to meet the normal govt standards. If it does, fine and govt funding continues. It it doesn't, it loses govt funding and has to rely - like thousands of other charities - on other sources.

It's only a big deal because, instead of just doing as everyone else does, and getting on with it (either improving accountability and governance, or securing other funds) KC seems to think it should get special treatment. Without seeming to have a single reason for being considered unique.

Important? Good works? Yes, probably. But not uniquely so, and certainly not the to extent of being exempt from the standards that other charities can meet.

She's not the Messiah, she's a very norty girl.

Bookish- there being loads of measures of poverty is part of the problem.

If a charity go into an area and hand out condoms/ rise awareness and then the rate of infections goes down then it's not too much of a stretch to suggest the charity is doing what they aim to.

Caroldecker said what I was trying to but more articulately

Mide - rate of infections going down could be due to other areas - most commonly, most infection is not known as most people aren't tested. Secondly most STIs are symptom free for a period and/ or people don't go to doctors with symptoms due to embarrassment. There are many things which are easy to evaluate - sexual health is not one of them.

kids company could have used any measurement approach and articulated their choice. They haven't done that. Other charities do and have done that. As said on the other thread, Kids Co is free to get funding from other donors, but they currently operate in a part of London where CAHMS and child protection services simply can't cope with demand. As a tax payer, they have to articulate why £4.25m of government funding is better spent with them than with the Maudsley CAMHS services. At present, I'd prefer it to go to the Maudsley which does have a level of accountability and reporting.

That's fine bookish. I'm not disagreeing with you and maybe sexual health was a bad example.

All I was getting at is in our current culture of targets, reviews and tables some areas are easier to quantify then others.

Some of the main things they're funded to do are the easiest to quantify, like feeding people.

One thing that a lot of this discussion ignores is the fact that a lot of service users at these places are excluded from mainstream agencies. Children of illegal immigrants who are living here under the radar. Children who have run away from home. Those who have been trafficked and exploited. Also the young adults who have left care or been thrown on the streets with nothing or no one. Many more examples of this but it's all horribly depressing and I have to think that the conspiracy claims might have some truth. It's not a conspiracy theory when there really is a conspiracy....

Yes bonita I agree. These are mostly not kids with a happy ending. I keep reading about these alternative, more worthy provision, such as CAMHS. These kids aren't going to access CAMHS. Their immediate needs are much more fundamental

Haha yes the old woman beneficiary and those comments about 'being concerned for her mental health' ,surely as a charity mega mogul she wouldn't take money from someone doubting their MH? bit of own goal there.

I agree with you Solija. Some of the people who access these sorts of charities wouldn't have access to mainstream agencies. However, I think even children of illegal immigrants (for example) have quite a good network provided they go to a school. It's the ones who are NEET who are the most vulnerable.

whats NEET?

Well we can't know how many of these children are children of illegal immigrants because the organisation doesn't provide basic stats about its client group.

They don't even give basic info such as client age groups and how many are male and female.

The more vulnerable the young people are, the more there needs to be procedures in place to make sure the organisation is behaving appropriately towards them, particularly as one of the functions of the organisation is housing of under eighteens.

Not in education, employment or training and under 25, Fuji.

Some of this type of work is very difficult to quantify, building any kind of relationship with these young people could take months and months, and at the end of that time all that you have achieved is that they trust you. A massively important first step but not one that fits into a tick box on a funding form. However... any organisation that is so synonymous with one personality makes me very uneasy. There seems to be widespread concern about layers of management within organisations, but in my view these layers are a vital safeguard, and at some point someone in the chain will say hold on is this right. My experience of organisations that are “someone's baby”, particularly if this has gone on for years, is that the room for discussion and debate shrinks.