[dropcap size=small bg_color=”#21409a”]C[/dropcap]hances are, if you have even glanced at the news this past week, you will have seen a headline with the words ‘Kids Company’ in the title. But the downfall of this once prestigious £24 million charity is complicated to say the least and mired in accusations of rumour-mongering and governmental deceit.
In its simplest form, Kids Company’s collapse takes two strands – the claims of financial mismanagement and, secondly, allegations of sexual abuse and drug-taking at three of the organisations centres for young people, involving both staff and clients. Both raise serious concerns for charities nationally.
The claims were made public knowledge through a much publicised Buzzfeed and BBC Newsnight investigation, which uncovered disagreements amongst government ministers regarding whether or not to continue the charity’s funding. Following assurances Camilla Batmanghelidjh would step down, a £3 million grant was given. This only lead to more claims of mismanagement after a significant proportion of it was used to pay staff, when it should have been used for restructuring.
Separate from these events are the subsequent claims of sexual abuse made by ex-Kids Company clients and staff members, which were referred to the Metropolitan Police by Newsnight. The charity has been accused of mishandling these serious incidents by not reporting them to the relevant authorities. Ms.Batmanghelidjh has disputed this, telling Newsnight she had “no awareness” of any such incidents.
Out of all the facts and headlines circled in the last fortnight, what surprised me the most was that Kids Company, as a private charity, was not subject to any form of Ofsted inspections, checks or by any other safeguarding body. This is a charity who had received, since 2013, £9 million in government grants. As Camilla Batmanghelidjh herself has said, they profess to work with some of the most disturbed children in the country. Children who have been subject to sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect and domestic violence. And yet they have been allowed to carry out their work seemingly unchecked, without being held accountable to a central body?
Of course, a line has to be drawn between the public and private sphere, but when any organization – not least one providing services for vulnerable youth – is receiving almost a quarter of their running costs from government money, where is that line to be drawn?
The events of the last fortnight are a cautionary tale for charities across the country. Kids Company was once the darling of a Conservative government – cited by David Cameron as an example of his Big Society and courted by the rich and famous. Even now, Coldplay are reportedly looking into donating £10 million to keep part of the charity open. If Kids Company could fall so rapidly, what kind of message does it send to other non-profits?
Quite simply that, in their eyes, everyone’s replaceable.
But are they? Certainly, to an uneducated eye it would appear that Kids Company took the strain off council and health services that were fit to bursting. As a self-referring service working with 36,000 children, there is no doubt that the charity was under huge strain.
Batmanghelidjh told the BBC as much, describing them as overwhelmed: “What people don’t understand is Kids Company has been carrying a statutory case load of very disturbed children and young people who are self-referring off the street, for which we get no money. What we wanted was help, for the Government to come and help take this case load of children off us, or sit with us and go through this case load and make decisions about what we were going to do.”
Realistically, however, what could Kids Company have done? They were working in a sector where it is estimated, according to figures from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, that government funding for charities in the sector has fallen by almost 20%. Kids Company was the exception to that rule and, as such, was left to cope with an influx of cases. It is impossible to pass an absolute judgement on the charity’s organizational structure, or the allegations that have come to light in the past few days; with the facts still emerging, it seems that we still only have one half of the puzzle.
What the situation has highlighted, though, is why the government relied so much on one charity to provide support for these children? As Kids Company collapsed, local councils were (and probably still are) frantically rushing to find alternative provisions for some of the most vulnerable young people in their borough’s care. No council should be that reliant on one charity or on one sector. If Kids Company had structural issues, then the same can be said of governmental policy.
The lack of accountability, the throwing of funds at one charity at the expense of the rest of a sector and over-reliance should be a stark warning.
Kids Company may have professed to work miracles, but it was not, and should never have been seen as, a miracle worker. Charitable organisations should always be part of the solution, not the whole.
For 36,000 children, what for some was the biggest supporter in their lives, has been lost. At the very least, lessons must be learnt, both in the non-profit sector and in government.
Susannah Keogh
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