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Children's Charity - Kids Club

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Children's Charity - Kids Club Empty Another Kids charity with issues!

Post  Bampots Fri 03 Jul 2015, 11:30 pm



Media captionSpeaking to the Today programme, Ms Batmanghelidjh denied the charity had been mismanaged

The chief executive of a charity whose government funding has been withheld over concerns about its ability to manage itself is to step down.
Kids Company had been told by government officials it would not get £3m of funding unless its leader Camila Batmanghelidjh was replaced. 
The charity said it will appoint a new chief executive because of "unprecedented financial strain".
Ms Batmanghelidjh will take up a new advocacy and clinical role.
She denied claims the charity had been mismanaged and that this had led to government pressure for a restructure, insisting such claims were a "red herring" to distract from the government's child protection failings.
Downing Street denied claims it had briefed against Ms Batmanghelidjh and said David Cameron believed the charity still had a role to play helping to "give every child the best start in life".
But the prime minister's spokesman said the Cabinet Office had requested changes to the Kids Company management structure "to ensure that their work is put on a sustainable footing".
It follows a joint investigation between BBC Newsnight and Buzzfeed, which learned the Cabinet Office had concerns about the charity's ability to run itself.

'Always the plan'

Ms Batmanghelidjh told BBC Radio 4's Today programme she had always planned to step down in her 20th year in 2016. 
Children's Charity - Kids Club _84021355_027990995The government has said it will continue to work with Kids Company
The charity, which started in south London and supports deprived young people and their families, is one of the most high-profile in Britain and regularly hosts leading politicians.
It is synonymous with its charismatic leader and founder Ms Batmanghelidjh.
It relies heavily on public funding; in the last set of published accounts, for 2013, the government provided £4m, about one fifth of its annual £20m funding.
Officials reported that Justice Secretary Michael Gove and Oliver Letwin, minister without portfolio, supported a tougher approach to the charity.
Children's Charity - Kids Club _75306515_line976Children's Charity - Kids Club _84028508_hi003031540

Who is Camila Batmanghelidjh?

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Post  candyfloss Fri 03 Jul 2015, 11:34 pm

I think Harriet Harman is sticking up for her.  


Nick Sutton retweeted


The World at One ‏@BBCWorldatOne  · 8h8 hours ago

Children's Charity - Kids Club CI_r3PrWgAAWcvl

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Post  Andrew Thu 30 Jul 2015, 7:05 pm

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Post  PeterMac Fri 31 Jul 2015, 7:25 am

poster wrote:
Wow, how DIRTY is all this 'missing children' supposed charity stuff?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/kids-company-charity-is-investigated-by-scotland-yards-child-abuse-sex-offences-and-exploitation-unit-10429093.html
Kids Company charity is investigated by Scotland Yard's child abuse, sex offences and exploitation unit

The Met said it was looking into a 'number of allegations of crime'
IAN JOHNSTON   Friday 31 July 2015

The charity Kids Company is being investigated by police from Scotland Yard’s child abuse, sex offences and exploitation unit.
The Metropolitan Police said it was looking into a “number of allegations of crime” involving Kids Company, which works with vulnerable children and young adults.
In a statement, Kids Company said it was “co-operating fully with the police to assist the investigation into what it understands to be historical but serious allegations”. It added it had “no further substantive information”.
“Kids Company’s first priority is the safety and security of all the children, young people and adults we support and protect,” the statement said.
“The organisation operates robust policies and procedures that ensure all Kids Company’s clients are protected. The safety, security and well-being of the children, young people and adults we support is our first priority and it is this imperative that will guide our response to the allegations once further information has been disclosed by the police.”
Police said they had “commenced an investigation into a number of allegations of crime involving a children’s charity”.
Earlier this month, it was revealed that ministers had overruled advice from senior civil servants and handed a £3m grant to Kids Company despite allegations of financial mismanagement.
This is the one run by the ludicrous  BatMan woman who dresses in curtains and a turban
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Post  candyfloss Fri 31 Jul 2015, 8:09 am

She resigned a few weeks ago PM.

Kids Company's Camila Batmanghelidjh to step down


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33376467



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Post  PeterMac Fri 31 Jul 2015, 10:12 am

~Mmmm. I realised that. I wonder why ?
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Post  Bubblewrapped Fri 31 Jul 2015, 10:17 am

What has happened to her other company...The Place2B ?? Anyone know...

“Camila Batmanghelidjh ("Batmanjelidge", born 1963, Tehran, Iran) is a British businesswoman, charity leader and author of Iranian and Belgian origin. She has been living in England since the age of 11[1] and has founded two charities - the place2b[2] and Kids Company, where she and her team care for 17,000 vulnerable children and young people in London.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2012/09/500746.html

Comments are interesting.....click below link

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2012/09/500746.html?c=on#c287999


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Post  Freedom Fri 31 Jul 2015, 10:20 am

I presume that this is it?

http://www.place2be.org.uk/

Now, now Peter, there is no problem with Mrs Batman wearing curtains - as long as they aren't low-cut!
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Post  Bubblewrapped Fri 31 Jul 2015, 10:28 am

Freedom wrote:I presume that this is it?

http://www.place2be.org.uk/

Now, now Peter, there is no problem with Mrs Batman wearing curtains - as long as they aren't low-cut!

Ty for the link Freedom flower
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Post  PeterMac Fri 31 Jul 2015, 12:55 pm

Freedom wrote:
Now, now Peter, there is no problem with Mrs Batman wearing curtains - as long as they aren't low-cut!

Pray they don't "whoosh" ! !
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Post  PeterMac Fri 31 Jul 2015, 2:02 pm

Just in case anyone thought it might be nothing more than hands-in-the-till  . ..
Kids Company charity is investigated by Scotland Yard's child abuse, sex offences and exploitation unit
The Met said it was looking into a 'number of allegations of crime'

On their website she has blown it.
If we had been aware of sexual assaults taking place on our premises we would have reported these to the police and the local safeguarding board. So you can understand that I am taken aback by allegations which now present themselves, about which I knew nothing.
We are cooperating with the police fully. If these allegations are true, I am filled with horror at the thought that someone may have been harmed in our care and we were not aware of it.

Like the BBC did with Savile, and Harris, and all the others ?
Like the Palace of Westminster did . . .

And an interesting and rather clumsy phrase   "I am filled with horror at the thought that someone may have been harmed in our care and we were not aware of it."
I am sure she doesn't mean what that can imply !
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Post  PeterMac Fri 31 Jul 2015, 2:16 pm

And still on the subject , they still talk about 36,000 children.   Apparently that number has been stable for some years.
We provide practical, emotional and educational support to vulnerable inner-city children, young people and families.
Our services reach 36,000 across London, Bristol and Liverpool,

So that is 36,000 in just THREE cities !

Kids Company operates through nine centres and a two therapy houses in London, Bristol and Liverpool.
So each of the centres caters for 4,000 children !
Anyone know where they are ?  They must be a considerable size.
compare this
Stantonbury Campus is a secondary foundation school located in north Milton Keynes, England, established in 1974. It is the second largest secondary comprehensive school in the United Kingdom with more than 2,100 school students aged 11–18 (Years 7-13 / US Grades 6-12). It is built as part of a community site, including shared facilities including a leisure centre, theatre, health centre and church.

Or is someone making this up ?
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Post  candyfloss Tue 04 Aug 2015, 9:18 pm

Tweet from TV reporter and who wrote the latest story of the children mistaken for Madeleine ....



Emma ‏@EmmaGritt ·
Disgusted Camila Batmanghelidjh gets paid £90K a year to run @KidsCompanyUK. But that's 'charity' for ya >> http://dailym.ai/1MIBi09


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Post  candyfloss Wed 05 Aug 2015, 8:31 am

Kids Company charity in closure warning



Children's Charity - Kids Club _84552122_camillapa

 
Charity Kids Company, which received £3m from ministers a week ago, has told the government it will close its services on Wednesday evening.
The youth work charity received the money against the advice of officials, who had raised concerns about how it would be spent.
Local authorities have been making plans to support young people who would need help if Kids Company closes.
Kids Company said closure speculation was "dangerous and irresponsible".

Staff payment

The news that the charity might have to close comes as the result of a joint investigation by BBC Newsnight and BuzzFeed News.
Last month, their investigations revealed that the £3m grant from the Cabinet Office would only be paid on the condition that Camila Batmanghelidjh, its high-profile chief executive, agreed to step down as part of a reorganisation. The government finally released the money last week after she said she would do so.
The Cabinet Office's £3m grant had been intended for a "transformation and downsizing plan" that would support the charity as it reformed itself.
That department is currently making plans to recover the grant because the Cabinet Office believes that the conditions attached to the use of the money were not met.
According to an email cache passed anonymously to Newsnight and BuzzFeed News over the weekend, the charity appears to have used some of the cash to pay staff - a day-to-day cost for which officials say it was not intended.
Ms Batmanghelidjh wrote to staff last Tuesday saying: "I am so sorry you have not been paid yet. We are waiting for exchanges between the government and the philanthropists and trustees to be completed."
On Wednesday, she wrote: "Everything has been agreed, we are going ahead with payroll. It will be done tomorrow as soon as the money hits our account.
"Thank you for your patience. You have been amazing and I am so sorry that the machinery of Whitehall was slower than we would have liked."
On Thursday, when the Cabinet Office grant had been cleared into the charity's bank account, she wrote: "I just want to let you know that we have just received our funding from the government and are processing payroll right now."
The charity said: "Kids Company's July payroll was two days later than usual whilst we waited for a grant from the Cabinet Office to arrive."
According to one official familiar with the matter, £800,000 was paid out immediately to staff.
Officials are now working out how much of the grant they will be able to recover.
Kids Company said it was "grateful for the ongoing support of the Cabinet Office that recognises the need for our work supporting some of society's most vulnerable children and young people". It is not clear what conditions the charity understood were attached to the grant.
On Tuesday afternoon government officials, charities and local authorities were briefed on the likely impact of of the charity closing its services.

Civil service scepticism

The decision to make the £3m grant was controversial. The Cabinet Office's lead official, Richard Heaton, wrote to ministers on 26 June asking for a "ministerial direction" before making the payment.
The permanent secretary logged his view that he thought the grant would be poor value for money. He sought written confirmation that they wanted him to go ahead with a grant regardless.
Mr Heaton said: "It is... my judgement that the proposed additional £3m grant does not represent value for money, in terms of delivering the outcomes for which the department is funded by parliament."
Ministerial directions are relatively rare; only three were requested in the past parliament across government.
In their reply, Matthew Hancock and Oliver Letwin, Cabinet Office ministers, said he should press ahead and that they took confidence "from the changes that Kids Company has undertaken to make in terms of its leadership, management and governance, which we judge do give it a realistic prospect of long-term viability so it can continue to deliver for vulnerable young people".
This is not the first occasion on which Mr Letwin had intervened to secure funding for the charity.
During the last Parliament, he and Steve Hilton, the prime minister's one-time adviser, supported the charity's call for funds within Whitehall in 2011.
Officials in the Department for Education report that Downing Street was in favour of funding the charity. Michael Gove, then education secretary, and Tim Loughton, then children's minister, opposed giving grants to the charity.
Mayor of London Boris Johnson confirmed that City Hall had also previously provided funding for Kids Company.
He told the BBC he was a "huge fan" of Ms Batmanghelidjh and that it was "a great shame" the charity "doesn't seem to be working".
He said voluntary organisations and local authorities in London would now have to provide a "safety net" to safeguard children affected by a closure.
Last week, the police opened an investigation into serious allegations of incidents involving young people who use the charity that were not passed on to the police. The charity says it always meets its obligations to report crimes.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33641889

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Post  PeterMac Wed 05 Aug 2015, 10:12 am

There is something very seriously wrong with this Charity - as with so many
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9437932/the-trouble-with-kids-company/
In 2006, when David Cameron was leader of the opposition, he made an infamous speech that is remembered as an exhortation to hug a hoodie. Feral youth, he said, should be helped rather than demonised. He was reaching towards what he hoped would be a new, ‘compassionate’ conservatism inspired in part by the charismatic social activist Camila Batmanghelidjh.

She was the perfect lodestar for the young Tory leader. She began her drop-in centre — the Kids Company — in 1996 and within a few years, was helping thousands of disadvantaged inner-city children. She’s colourful, powerful but also a former Sherborne girl with whom Cameron and other members of the establishment felt at ease. Cameron told his shadow ministers that Camila embodied the Big Society. He suggested they study her work and design policies that reflected it.

The cash has rolled in to Kids Company. It has received more than £25 million from the government, and another £4.25 million has just been agreed. Prince Charles is a fan; the rock group Coldplay have donated £8 million. Then there’s Richard Branson, J.K. Rowling, Jemima Khan, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, John Lewis and more.

Good for Camila Batmanghelidjh, you might say, but there are a number who believe that Kids Company has perhaps grown too quickly and would, despite its undoubted achievements, benefit from a review of its operations and controls. They worry that Kids Company has become too famous, untouchable, and now acts as a drain on well-meaning donations that might otherwise go to better causes. Having investigated the charity for several months, I’m afraid I agree.

I first became interested in Kids Company after meeting and writing about a recent benefactor of theirs, Joan Woolard, who sold her house just over a year ago so as to give the proceeds to Kids Company. Less than a year after making her enormous donation, of about £200,000, she became so disillusioned that she complained to the Charity Commission and is demanding back her money. I wrote about Mrs Woolard, a 76-year-old widow from Lincolnshire, for the Oldie magazine. My piece covered her wider life, which included working as a Labour MP’s secretary. But one observation I made was this: ‘What is perhaps most bizarre about this tale is that Joan has no idea what has become of her money. The charity has never informed her how it has been or will be used, despite her being its largest individual donor.’

Ms Batmanghelidjh does not take criticism on the chin. She wrote to the then Oldie editor Richard Ingrams insisting he ‘repair’ the ‘incredibly damaging narrative’. She stated Kids Company had ‘worked very carefully’ with Joan for more than a year before accepting the donation.

Is that right? Not according to Mrs Woolard: ‘Contrary to what she claims, I never received a personal letter from Camila thanking me for making my donation. I had a few meetings with her in the 15 months before I made my donation but it’s not correct to say I “worked” with her.’

So much for hurt feelings — more interesting are Joan’s other misgivings. After the Oldie spat, by way of making up, Joan spent a week volunteering at Kids Company, to see how donations were spent.



One of its therapy centres she attended was the Morgan Stanley Heart Yard in south London. It was bought with £1.6 million given by the London arm of the American investment bank after which it was named and opened by Joanna Lumley. What struck Mrs Woolard was the absence of children. She says: ‘Camila said that the charity is “short of money” because summer is a busy time because so many more children need to be fed and looked after during the school holidays. But I was told by staff that during the summer holidays there are fewer children to look after. I can’t square this fundamental contradiction.’

Nor, as it happens can some other former senior members of Kids Company, who claim that there are ‘exaggerations’ in the numbers of people it says it helps. In the charity’s annual reports, the numbers increased from 13,500 in 2008 to 16,500 in 2010 before jumping to an astonishing 36,000 the next year. That figure of 36,000 has been used in Kids Company literature ever since, but some ex-staff members have questioned it. In response to this, the charity stated it uses a computer system tracking all the children, young people and families with which it works, recording why money was spent on them and what outcome arose, and that the earlier figures were under-estimates.

This all sounds very professional, but it turns out it is not just children who are included in the much-touted 36,000. In an email to me the charity wrote: ‘When we refer to clients they include children, young people, young adults with special needs, carers, i.e. foster parents or parents who predominantly have mental health difficulties, and school staff.’ Strange to include parents and school staff in the number of those helped.

On to Joan’s next concern, which she heard from staff in Kids Company HQ. Some employees are former ‘clients’ — people helped by the charity itself when younger — and the complaint from regular staff was that some of these former clients did not bother turning up to work. Joan told me: ‘One girl had apparently swanned off for the whole summer, to the obvious annoyance of colleagues. I was also told that others who visit the charity are given cash allowances to supplement their Jobseekers’ Allowances and to prevent them from stealing or dealing drugs. I don’t think private donors or the government give Kids Company money so that it can be handed out to young people in cash?’

When I put this to Ms Batmanghelidjh, she said: ‘Money is only spent on the most destitute of our clients.’ She said this included ‘trafficked mothers’ unable to access welfare despite having children born in the UK, and young people in education who ‘receive food vouchers and a bus pass’. She said: ‘I want to be very clear that at no time have we paid or do we pay clients to come to us.’

However, I’ve spoken to former Kids Company employees who might disagree. I’ve also spoken to a former Kids Company member of staff, Genevieve Maitland Hudson, who left the charity in 2009. She told me that young people were given cash and travel cards. She said: ‘On Fridays in 2008, little packages of cash were handed out to every young person through a window in the Urban Academy reception. It was always tense. There were tears. There was shouting. There were threats. There were fights.’ What prompted Genevieve to leave Kids Company was not the challenging work and certainly not the young people, about whom she has only good things to say, but the ‘culture’ of the charity.

Finally, last August — six weeks after it was promised — Joan Woolard received the report setting out where her money had gone. It had been overseen and written off personally by Ms Batmanghelidjh. But instead of allaying the widow’s concerns, it only increased them. Five of its 11 pages were simply photographs of children. Within the text were three boxes referring to what her money had bought. This included the claim that £44,181 of her donation went on ‘the entirety of our food budget at Kenbury [one of its London centres] between September and December 2013’.

Mrs Woolard found this odd. A Kids Company report produced for the government — covering the period 2011 to 2013 — had stated: ‘In the past year, £174,379 was spent providing meals at four of our centres’ — including Kenbury. This suggested that the average monthly budget for each of the four centres was only £3,600. Yet according to the report given to Mrs Woolard, the monthly average for Kenbury during the period her money was spent on food there was £11,045 — three times higher. The charity says it’s confident about its figures.

Its special report for Mrs Woolard stated that Kids Company fed ‘approximately 3,000 children each week’. An article in the Evening Standard last October also stated that the Kenbury Street centre serves 3,000 hot meals each week.

The figures are confusing. Are 450 youngsters being fed a meal there daily — a total of 3,000 meals a week? Or are 3,000 youngsters getting one meal there each per week? Mrs Woolard tried to find out by visiting the Kenbury Street centre unannounced. She estimated that the dining space had enough room for 60 people at any one time. To serve 3,000 meals per week would require seven separate sittings per day, seven days a week. She feels these numbers just do not add up.


Camila Batmanghelidjh dismissed my concerns about the treatment of Mrs Woolard, saying in email: ‘We have been concerned about Joan Woolard and her mental health. A few months back we discussed our concerns with the Charity Commission and placed the evidence with them.’ Quite apart from the distasteful nature of the accusation, and the fact that I found Joan Woolard to be perfectly sane, the question remains: if Kids Company really thinks Joan Woolard might be mentally unwell, doesn’t it have a duty to return her £200,000?

Camila Batmanghelidjh claims that Kids Company has an open-door policy, and she invited me to spend time there, as Mrs Woolard had. I daresay I’d be charmed by Camila, as so many others have been. But I’m not sure a casual day-long visit is the solution for Kids Company. Like other charities in receipt of vast sums of taxpayers’ money, it needs to be able to demonstrate to donors — and the outside world — that the money is being used as well as possible, however worthy the objectives. If a government department, say, or a donor like Joan Woolard or a former staff member has concerns about a charity, they must be properly addressed.

Charm is no substitute for transparency. Or at least it ought not to be. Officials in the Department for Education, for instance, were so unimpressed by Kids Company’s financial management that they persuaded ministers to stop millions in funding. Ms Batmanghelidhjh’s response was to contact the Prime Minister, who personally intervened with the Department for Education to make sure Kids Company got its cash. Not a word of the argument leaked.

Who can blame Camila for fighting for her charity? But this sequence of events exemplifies the problem: if you’re too well connected for anyone to criticise you, if you’re always pulling strings, you risk losing transparency and therefore accountability — however well intentioned you are.

This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 14 February 2015

So where is the money - Mrs Batman ?

Just as an aside . . . would it not be poetic justice if the whole McCann / Limited Company / Charity / Missing people / PACT link was shown to have drawn attention to
the obvious frauds and scams which exist, and as a consequence the 'Charity' edifice begins to crumble !

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Post  Bampots Wed 05 Aug 2015, 3:18 pm

Watching BBC news twenty four this afternoon around 3pm they said that some of the names associated with the charity include Jk Rowling and Richard Branson who both were on the board.........and lo and behold.....


http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/article1528332.ece


It's probably just my suspicious mind but someone once said something about coincidence and these two were among the first to offer Kate and Gerry support!

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Post  Andrew Wed 05 Aug 2015, 3:30 pm

Why would the likes of Rowling and Branson be involved in all this (charity scam) from the beginning though...

That's what I really don't understand.
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Post  bluebell Wed 05 Aug 2015, 5:24 pm

Sorry can't get the whole article as it's behind a paywall. http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/People/article1577174.ece

It doesn't inspire confidence in me after reading all the news items.    
Why is so much of the money donated to these charities used on various expenses and staff wages.
I've just listened to C. Batmanghelidjh saying that items are donated for the charity, but what she needed is money to pay staff. !
Who comes first in such circumstances.  
Anyone seen their accounts? £23,000,000.





News
Fine talk, big staff, but where are the children, Lady Bountiful?

Camilla Long Published: 5 July 2015

Camila Batmanghelidjh’s charity employs 650 staff and receives about £4m of taxpayers’ money a year. She says it cannot survive without her: ‘I’m not going to step down because the government tells me’Camila Batmanghelidjh’s charity employs 650 staff and receives about £4m of taxpayers’ money a year. She says it cannot survive without her: ‘I’m not going to step down because the government tells me’
Six weeks ago I visited Kids Company, the charity for deprived children, now at the centre of a funding row. I wanted to look into some of the problems faced by Camila Batmanghelidjh, the luxuriant Lady Bountiful who founded this beacon of altruism.

These included the strange case of Joan Woolard, a furious 77-year-old donor who thought the whole thing stank.

Woolard, a widow from ­Lincolnshire, complained that she had sold her house to donate £200,000 to the charity, only to become concerned a year later that neither Batmanghelidjh nor anyone else could tell her how this huge amount had been spent.

A visit she made to Kids Company’s drop-in centre in Brixton, south London, had only complicated matters, leading to a furious showdown with Batmanghelidjh.

There didn’t seem to be many children, Woolard said. She couldn’t work out how the charity claimed it “reached” 36,000 disadvantaged kids when the


Last edited by bluebell on Wed 05 Aug 2015, 5:26 pm; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : added link)

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Post  costello Wed 05 Aug 2015, 6:18 pm

Courtesy of Doug D. on CMoMM.

Something else G.B. intervened personally in 2007.

Separately a former adviser in the last Labour Government told the BBC he raised concerns about Kids Company in 2007 saying there was a "cult of personality" surrounding Ms Batmanghelidgh .
The adviser claimed the then P.M. Gordon Brown intervened personally to safe guard the funding for the charity.

As mentioned up thread too many coincidences.
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Post  candyfloss Wed 05 Aug 2015, 7:18 pm

Kids Company founder in tears as charity closes



3 hours ago
Kids Company founder Camila Batmanghelidjh broke down in tears as she confirmed the charity would close on Wednesday.
Speaking to Simon Cox, for BBC Radio 4's The Report, she said: "We've had to abandon a lot of children.
"That's it, it's the end of Kids Company."
She blamed civil servants, ministers and the media for "putting the nail in this organisation


Audio of Camila Batmanghelidjh speaking on this link........


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33794184

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Post  Andrew Wed 05 Aug 2015, 7:46 pm

She broke down in tears when she expected no wages to be paid. Mainly hers.
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Post  PeterMac Wed 05 Aug 2015, 9:43 pm

According to some accounts children were handed money in envelopes to spend as they wished.
Now go back and look at the Sky reports and interviews with the mothers of the children allegedly affected by the closure, and have a long think about this whole issue.
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Post  Mimi Wed 05 Aug 2015, 10:12 pm

Quite an in depth section on Kids Company closure and interview with Mrs. Batman on Radio 4`s PM tonight.

Apparently there will be more on Radio 4 at 8pm tomorrow night.

From 8.03 mins

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06555ll

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Post  PeterMac Thu 06 Aug 2015, 8:37 am

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3186553/A-genius-seducing-rich-Kids-Company-founder-expert-convincing-wealthy-help-vulnerable-youngsters-says-HARRIET-SERGEANT.html

A genius for seducing the rich: Kids Company founder was expert at convincing wealthy to help vulnerable youngsters, says HARRIET SERGEANT
By HARRIET SERGEANT
PUBLISHED: 23:50 GMT, 5 August 2015
Kids Company founder Camila Batmanghelidjh, who was an expert at convincing wealthy people to help vulnerable youngsters
Nearly a decade has passed since I first met Camila Batmanghelidjh. She was holding a meeting with a dozen businessmen, and I watched astounded as she dazzled them with a lecture about her theories concerning emotional development and violent behaviour in young people.
When she excused herself to take a call from one of the children in her care at the charity Kids Company, they all shook their heads in admiration at her dedication.
Here was a woman, I decided, with a genius for convincing wealthy people that helping vulnerable youngsters was not only a noble thing to do, but was also fashionable.
Because of that particular talent, the charity Camila founded in 1996 has been a peculiar mixture of glamour and deprivation. It’s been where the great and the good, the wealthy and powerful — right up to the Prime Minister himself — have felt able to do their bit for the poor and dispossessed.
Distressing stories of the children the charity helped even appeared in glossy magazines such as House & Garden.
That contradiction is personified in Camila herself. An Iranian who went to an English public school, she presents herself as a radical outsider while at the same time befriending leading members of the political and showbusiness establishments, and raising funds from City institutions.
David Cameron is said to be ‘mesmerised’ by her.
The multi-millionaire artist Damien Hirst is a fan, as is Prince Charles, while the band Coldplay have donated millions.
Yet given recent events at Kids Company — allegations of sexual impropriety, questions over its management, a row about a £3million government grant, and its final collapse yesterday — disturbing questions must surely be raised about whether those who’ve given so much money really knew where it was all going.

This, remember, is an organisation which received tens of millions from successive governments. Did ministers really scrutinise its practices, or did they simply see a chance to make some political capital by funding such a fashionable cause?
Certainly, the history of Kids Company over the nine years that I have followed its progress offers a disturbing insight into how easy it is to exploit government goodwill, along with the public’s commendable idealism and impulse to help the vulnerable.

I came into contact with the charity as part of my research into the care system for a major report I was preparing. After I sat in on that first meeting, I visited Kids Company in South London. From the outset, I was concerned about the numbers of youngsters it actually claimed to be helping.
In the world of charities, numbers matter. Numbers dictate government funding and private donations.
Camila told me 50 or 60 kids turned up every day for lunch and Pilates or yoga classes. But when I visited the centre, I found just one sulky teenager over whom ten staff hovered solicitously. When I asked some youngsters the following week why they came to the centre, they looked surprised. ‘For the money of course,’ one explained. It certainly was not for the education or yoga.

As I saw for myself, every Friday staff handed out envelopes of cash ranging from £50 to £200 — a serious amount to a young person who might otherwise only receive £50 a week from the State to live on.
The allowance appeared to be the key to the popularity of the centre.
One member of staff even admitted: ‘You don’t see most of the kids coming any other day.’
As one teenager told me: ‘I come on Friday lunchtimes to socialise, pick up my allowance and then I go.

Kids Company, it appeared, was using cash hand-outs — some of which came direct from taxpayers, remember — to bump up those all-important attendance numbers.
Before its closure yesterday, it seemed little had changed. Young people, especially teenage gang members, were still not using the charity in nearly the numbers it claimed.
One Wednesday last summer, I sat outside to see for myself and counted, over a three-hour period, 40 arrivals.
The majority of the visitors I saw were not ‘exceptionally vulnerable’ children suffering from malnutrition, as one journalist claimed, but adults. Only seven teenage boys were among the 40. In fact, middle-class white visitors outnumbered black teenagers.
These issues surrounding Kids Company raise disturbing questions. Did not one of the great and the good, the pop stars, politicians and journalists think to visit the charity unannounced? Did one of them ever ask a young person for their views?
I befriended one teenage boy who went to Kids Company at the age of 15 in the hope of some education. Two years later, he was a crack addict spending the cash he received from Kids Company on his addiction.
‘I am not going back there,’ he told me. ‘If you stay you don’t progress, do you get me? You got to leave to progress.’
The shocking fact is that many of the people who eulogised about Kids Company did not pay close enough attention to what the children who used the place had to say.

They accepted Camila’s story because it suited them. Association with Kids Company made them look and feel good.
I got the impression that the young, largely black youths in the background were merely accessories to the image the donors sought to project. They used Kids Company to promote themselves, and Camila exploited that need. So politicians won voters; music fans were impressed: journalists gained awards.
But what about the young people who were supposed to be the ones to benefit? Of course, some youngsters have had their lives improved or even turned around by the work of dedicated staff at Kids Company. But there are others whose views are disturbing.
Protesters outside Kids Company offices in south London

Prime Minister David Cameron, has also been described as being 'mesmerised' by the charity founder
They saw no point complaining about any faults they might have found in the running of the charity.
As one said: ‘Who’s goin’ to ask us, crack addicts, robbers, street kids, kids from care, our views? Who’s goin’ to talk to us when all those nice middle-class people are saying how wonderful Kids Company is?’
Even the Government was in on it. It continued to lavish money on a charity despite the misgivings of civil servants and some ministers.
When Michael Gove was Education Secretary, he and the then children’s minister Tim Loughton are said to have opposed giving grants to the charity. But Downing Street was in favour of the funding.
Perhaps the real tragedy is that charities such as Kids Company are desperately needed to pick up the pieces of our failed welfare state.
Because of the epidemic of broken homes and dysfunctional families, there are large numbers of children who desperately need help.
Equally, I have no doubt that many of the Kids Company staff did a heroic job.
Now, it seems, those staff and those youngsters will have to look elsewhere after Camila shut down the charity last night.
Was this the action of a woman with her heart in the right place? Or one who cannot face a future out of the limelight?
Charities should be judged with heads and not hearts, and Camila and her organisation — for all their good intentions — should be no different.

£ 23 million spent so far, and it seems that contrary to the stated aim of trying to break the gang culture, it is very probable that it has done entirely the opposite.
How many Gangs send youngsters to the company to collect the money and then take it for themselves for drugs supplies ?
How many of those 'ethnic' families did the same ?

I fear we should brace ourselves for Gang warfare and possibly minor riots over the next few months as the effect of taking this amount of cash liquidity out of the local 'economy' begins to be realised.
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