The case raises many concerns about the role, competency and accountability of charity trustees
Kids Company, the high profile children’s charity, finally closed its doors yesterday, amid claim and counter-claim aired in the media about its work. When the dust settles on this case, I believe important questions must be addressed about the accountability and management of charities.
The charity, founded by Camila Batmanghelidjh, began its work in 1996 in Camberwell, south London. It provided a range of support for extremely vulnerable children who included runaways, the neglected, and children permanently excluded from school.
The support offered to each child depended on their individual needs, but included intensive psychotherapy, family therapy, advice, hot meals and alternative learning opportunities. Importantly, it had a policy of never turning a child away.
Since it started the charity has raised over £160 million. The charismatic Batmanghelidjh has been very skilled at raising money, whether it is small donations from individuals, private philanthropy from wealthy donors and companies, or central and local government funding. This success enabled the expansion of Kids Company, with new offices in London, Bristol and Liverpool. In April 2013 it received £9 million of government funding, to cover two years of work until March 2015.
There is no doubt that Kids Company has made a big difference to the lives of some very vulnerable children. But so have Barnardos, the Children’s Society, Trussell Trust foodbanks and many, many more low-profile children’s charities whose names are less familiar.
We can ask the question about whether better-managed charities might have spent £160 million with better long-term outcomes for children. There is also no doubt that Kids Company has diverted funds – both statutory grants and private donations – from other children’s charities.
The concerns that have been raised about Kids Company are not recent, and date back at least ten years. Mostly they relate to financial propriety and the claims-making of Camila Batmanghelidjh. In 2007 a civil servant asked me to comment on the numbers of children the charity alleged it was supporting. I felt the numbers used were logistically improbable and were not backed up with other evidence, such as other administrative data, case studies or research reports on the nature of their client base.
I was also told at this time that Gordon Brown and his team of special advisers had over-ruled civil service concerns about Kids Company.
Batmanghelidjh’s cause was also taken up by the Tories, with Cameron’s famous ‘hug a hoodie’ speech making extensive reference to Kids Company. Long-standing civil service concerns about the charity continued to be over-ruled by Number 10. A Cabinet Office review of Kids Company undertaken in 2014 came to nothing.
In February 2015 decisions about Department for Education grants to scores of children’s charities were delayed because of a dispute between Number 10 and civil servants over the Kids Company grant (Kids Company won this battle). Around the same time the Spectator magazine aired its concerns about the charity.
Despite receiving a substantial grant from the government, poor financial management meant that the charity was already near to closing by this spring. Batmanghelidjh then tried to obtain further government funding, using the threat of closure. After weeks of negotiation a deal was struck in late June 2015. Kids Company was to receive a one-off package £3 million funding, conditional on Batmanghelidjh and chairman Alan Yentob stepping aside and a complete restructure.
But again it seems that civil service concerns were over-ruled by ministers: a letter by Richard Heaton, permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, is quite uncompromising. But new allegations about sexual abuse led to the withdrawal of a large private donation, the eventual loss of Cabinet Office funding, and eventually forced the charity to close.
I believe that lessons need to be learned from the whole saga. We need to interrogate the claims-making of charities and not blindly accept them. Yesterday, Batmanghelidjh stated that 6,000 children would be abandoned if Kids Company closed, children she said have been ‘raped, attacked and have no relatives.’ For all their failings we do have statutory social services in the UK, who protect the most vulnerable children.
If Batmanghelidjh’s assertion was true, it would represent the largest and most shocking failure of social services, ever.
In awarding grants to Kids Company, ministers have continually over-ruled civil servants, not just since 2010, but before this. I would hope that both the Public Accounts Select Committee and the Education Select Committee take up this issue.
The case of Kids Company also raises many concerns about the role, competency and accountability of charity trustees. They lead their charity and have overall responsibility for how they are run. Trustees can and do sack chief executives – it has happened at two of my workplaces. They also sign off the accounts and provide financial oversight.
I find it surprising that Kids Company trustees allowed the charity to run for so long on a hand-to-mouth basis with little or no financial reserves. With more and more public services delivered by third sector organisations, including charities, charity trustees must be competent enough to provide oversight and be accountable for public monies they spend. This issue must also be considered by parliament.
Jill Rutter writes in a personal capacity and is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward.
22 Responses to “Lessons to learn from the Kids Company saga”
TN
People of your mindset (Islamist sympathisers and hard leftists) will always question Quilliam because they refuse to bow to the most conservative and/or vile aspects of the Islamist ideology and calls a spade a spade. The truth is too hard for your ilk to understand/accept.
JarrowPete
Often, it is charities that pick up the pieces for the failure of governmental policies. Surely governments have a moral as well as financial responsibility to fund charities.
anthony crawford
A good article this but there is one further lesson that has not so far been addressed. Kids Co no doubt did some good work and was valued in the community. But this is a fiasco made in Toryville. This is what comes of neoliberal social policy. Tories have used Batmanghelidjh particularly because she is media savvy and charismatic – and the purpose has been to denigrate professional practice to undermine the work of LA social work. It is for this reason that so much money has been thrown at Kids Co. All part of the Jesus inspired development of the big society. What we can learn from this is to trust more the the collective and accumulated expertise of professionals in practice and to be more savvy about supporting professionals in practice and recognising that promotion of charities, whilst not in itself a bad thing, is likely to form part of the amateurisation of service delivery and the abnegation of state responsibility to the vulnerable and needy.
Mrs Jackson
Speaking as an outsider with no emotional investment in either side, a number of things seem apparent. When Camilla B first set up KC, it was as a centre of last resort for troubled young people in London who fell outside the usual social services net: those escaping bullying, domestic violence, gangs sub culture. It provided a safe place, a hot meal, a listening ear and even pocket money to help them get some order and hope back into their lives.
And Camilla B was a colourful and persuasive advocate. Politicians liked to be seen supporting her. So did celebrities. The money rolled in. The project expanded both geographically and in terms of its activities – setting up Urban Academies to help older young men. (While worthy, this was always risky : helping mature men with bad problems alongside vulnerable much younger men and women.). As it expanded I imagine hard pressed social workers also referred vulnerable young people to it. Meanwhile the underlying financial remained – money coming in was spent on supporting and expanding the work with no revenue streams or investments and, outside of staff costs, little accountability.
So as it expanded Camilla B seems to have gone on with the same financial model and the trustees seem to have acquiesced – with their only income stream being what they could raised annually – no reserves and no investments – and it seems too many staff to properly manage and too many “clients” to adequately support. To sustain this Camilla B used her contacts to raise more funds and in particular her contacts in government. Public sector money however has strings, in particular you have to demonstrate your results but the numbers bandied about by KC could not be readily substantiated and not could elements of its expenditure be easily accounted for (the”pocket money”.) Clearly it was going to unravel at some stage, as it has, with all parties emerging badly. Maybe if she had just stuck to her original knitting, yiung people in London, it would not have all ended in tears.
Jennifer Hornsby
You say ‘failure of government policies’. Would this include failure to have a progressive tax system, so that the needed work with vulnerable, neglected children could be done in the public sector?