Catriona Grant spent some time working with embattled charity Kids Company and met its founder Camila Batmanghelidjh. Here she makes a defence of the organisation's work and explains why she is still on Team Camila.
I qualified as a social worker in 1996, at roughly the same time as Camila Batmanghelidjh set up Kids Company. There I suppose the similarities end.
However, over the years I have grown to have huge respect for Camila and the work of the staff and volunteers at the charity.
As a young psychotherapist she set up Place 2 Be, now in many schools across the UK and after leaving took over arches under a railway bridge to set up Kids Company - a sort of drop in centre meets youth club for local kids.
What always impressed me most about Kids Company was that young people and children referred themselves. They didn’t need a referral from a social worker or teacher. Kids Company didn’t turn kids away.
I suppose its the non referral process that got Kids Company in the place it’s in now. Too many children, young people and families. Too many people asking for help. Too many kids not going to school because school rejected them. Too many young people living in hostels. Too many children whose parents have no recourse to public funds. Too many kids who need a healthy meal at least once a day. Too many children living with parents with poor mental wellbeing or with addictions. Too many children living in homes affected by domestic abuse. Too many children frightened due to child sexual abuse. Too many staff to pay wages to. Not enough money.
Camila and the Kids Company board of trustees are under attack for not building up reserves, for spending unrestricted funds on paying rent, buying food for hungry families, paying for holidays for young people.
The Big Society is dead and the lesson for all charities to learn is don’t get too big for your boots, shut up and be grateful
Catriona Grant
There are allegations of sexual abuse and sexual exploitation. It appears the trustees and Camila knew that the funds were running out and there were no wages to be paid yet failed to issue redundancy notices or wind up projects. Which has proven to be a massive mistake.
There will be enquiries into all these matters and perhaps criticism is due and maybe when the police inquiry looks into the allegations of abuse we will be shocked. But critical reflection does not mean putting the boot in.
J’accuse not Camila or the board of trustees for behaving naively and hoping against hope that the funds would turn up. J’accuse the government. the local authorities, the NHS and all of society for allowing children to be in so much need they were so dependent on a charity like Kids Company.
Kids Company was supporting 36,000 children. Providing food, therapy, education, support, advice, care and attention. Filling the gaps where the statutory sector and the universal services failed them.
They were providing 3000 free meals a day, for some of the children it was their only meal of the day.
Kids Company reported that in 2011 - 12 that they saw an increase of 233% self referrals. To keep the services going with that much increase of referrals they needed £24 million.
The boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark made no financial contributions for the children of their borough attending Kids Company. Kids Company found itself spending £1.3m on hot meals, food parcels, food vouchers and their catering overheads.
I spent some time at Kids Company in 2004, just a couple of days, and spent the morning with Camila. I saw for myself the work that was being done, scary, dark sculptures made by children with their art therapist as they recovered from child sexual abuse, the queue for lunch, the education centre where kids learnt computing skills, the library with children reading books and spoke to staff and volunteers.
Once member of staff showed us the scars on his shoulders where he had been shot in a gang fight. When he first came to Kids Company, he was a teenager in a gang involved in stealing and running drugs for older gang members. He was using pills and taking cocaine.
He first came to Kids Company when one of his friends was going to get their dinner. He went along, after all it was free food. He kept coming back and over the months and years he began to trust the workers, he met a therapist and finally he left the gang. At the age of 22 he was at college and working part time at Kids Company wanted to be a therapist or a social worker.
Perhaps Camila relied too much on courting the Tories but she needed the money. The £3m the government gave grudgingly wasn’t for wages but organisational change.
Perhaps their financial governance wasn’t good enough, maybe even working with so many vulnerable people who could walk through the doors has made it unsafe from sexual predators.
But Kids Company didn’t create the need for the services, the meals, the emergency food parcels, a safe place for a young gang member to go. The need was always there and it still is.
Kids Company’s closure has left the children, young people and their families without anything.
The closure of Kids Company is a catastrophe. Love Camila or loathe her, she tried to do something amazing, provide a safe place for children, young people and their families.
I’m still on Team Camila until I know something that makes me change my mind. It wasn’t poor governance or psychobabble (another accusation against Camila) that killed Kids Company.
It was the lack of responsibility from the local authorities, NHS and central government allowing Kids Company to rely on the charity of benefactors, celebrities and the rich rather than take responsibility for the harm, abuse and poverty that so many children, young people and their families experience.
The Big Society is dead and the lesson for all charities to learn is don’t get too big for your boots, shut up and be grateful.
Catriona Grant is a social worker working in the voluntary sector, writing in a personal capacity.
