​Founder publishes new book telling her side of the story after well-publicised failure

Camila Batmanghelidjh has placed blame for the failure of Kids Company on politicans and the media in a book published this week.

The founder and former chief executive of Kids Company, which collapsed in 2015 amid allegations of mismanagement and misuse of funds, said she wrote the book, Kids – Child protection in Britain: The Truth, to “set the record straight.”

In the book Batmanghelidjh said part of the problem was down to the fact the London charity became too big.

She said: “Cabinet Office had tried and failed to get an independent auditor to find weaknesses in our charity and when that did not work, it drew up the report it wanted itself.

“Civil servants and ministers were engineering the closure of Kids Company,” she says.

And she claimed: “If you challenge politicians and it does not suit their agenda, they retort by shutting down the services of the organisation.”

A Charity Commission investigation found that between 2009 and 2013, Kids Company’s income increased by 77% but its expenditures increased by 72% and almost all of the funding it received each year was spent in the same year.

In the book Batmanghelidjh claims that records showing the Kids Company’s model to have been effective were “mislaid”.

She also claims the south London charity, which at its height employed 650 staff, was better run than many large charities with 90p in every £1 being used to support its aims.

“One well known (charity) and comparable to ours in size employed 250 fundraisers (against Kids Company’s 10),” she writes.

The media and various journalists also contributed to the collapse of the charity, according to the book.

Negative media reports about the charity discouraged potential donors, said Batmanghelidjh.

“We closed the day before the (news) broadcast because the damage had been immediate.”

I was the catalyst who facilitated - Camila Batmanghelidjh

On spending cash on designer clothes for young people – which wasn’t included in the charity’s accounts – she said this was something that funders did not understand.

“I couldn’t put in a request to a charitable trust for 300 pairs of Nike trainers. Most people’s idea of a poor child is an Oliver Twist type, sweet and begging,” she says but that “the trainers are a necessary step to education.

"They give a kid the dignity to tolerate the shame of not reading and writing, then walk into college to learn.”

Batmanghelidjh denies she suffered from founder syndrome – a term used to describe a founder who believes they are bigger than the charity and that it can’t operate without them.

“I did not perceive myself as the founder of Kids Company: instead, I was the catalyst who facilitated,” she says.

The Charity Commission opened a statutory inquiry shortly before the charity collapsed which is still ongoing.