Kids Company founder insists poverty handouts were properly accounted for

The founder of the defunct Kids Company charity has denied handing out hundreds of pounds “willy-nilly” in payments to vulnerable young people.

Camila Batmanghelidjh said that all the payments made to the charity’s clients had been properly accounted for.

The charity closed down earlier this year amid political controversy less than a week after receiving a £3 million government grant.

Giving evidence to the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Ms Batmanghelidjh said that handouts weekly generally ranged from £10 to £200 in the case of families.

“It has turned into the notion that it was handed out willy-nilly. It wasn’t. It was accounted for,” she said.

Ms Batmanghelidjh said that “poverty intervention payments” were made to cover food vouchers, bus passes and emergency grants.

She said that payments over £100-a-week were “very rare” and would only be made if a client had a family to support.

Her claim drew a warning from the committee chairman, Bernard Jenkin, who told her: “You are aware that it is a contempt of Parliament to mislead this committee and that is a very serious thing.”

Ms Batmanghelidjh said that any payments over £5,000 had to be approved by the board.

The chairman of the trustees, BBC creative director Alan Yentob, said there was a high level of financial oversight.

“The vigilance of this was quite considerable,” he said.

Ms Batmanghelidjh insisted that the distribution of payments to clients was properly supervised.

“Everything would go in an envelope for the individual child with a receipt on top. It was then driven down to the street level centres,” she said.

“When it would arrive at the end of the week at the street level centre the team inside that reception area would oversee the handing out of the envelope for which the client had to sign.”

Batmanghelidjh denied claims that the company had instructed former staff to shred client records after the charity closed.

She said: “That is completely incorrect. We did not shred any client records and the records were all handed over to the official receiver.

“What we handed over were 18,000 hard copy files that contained family members in them.

“In addition we handed over a database of our most high risk cases which amounted to 15,933 individuals. And we handed over copies of 117 referral forms we did.

“Absolutely no records were shredded.”

She added that the 18,000 files now remained in secure storage.

The pair were asked about a memo sent to the Cabinet Office stating that communities helped by the charity would descend into savagery, looting and arson if it closed.

Asked if it was a shocking thing to say about “ordinary, decent” people, Mr Yentob denied writing the letter and said “it was a safeguarding document intended to be a worst case scenario”.

He said that five days after Kids Company closed a boy was murdered, and there were stabbings and four suicide attempts as the “consequence of the absence of a place for these children to go.”

Ms Batmanghelidjh said: “This is the essence of the problem really.

“I feel that actually representatives of leadership in this country don’t really have a visceral understanding of what it is like in some of these neighbourhoods for many of the children, young people and families.

“The levels of violence and perversion that some of these young people are having to endure is really very shocking. I think you need to be a bit fairer.”

Ms Batmanghelidjh dismissed “widespread” evidence from social services that clients were being engaged with and given money when there was no protection need.

She said that, after the company closed in August, local authorities did not carry out proper assessments.

She said: “I would welcome a scrutiny of what social services actually did with those cases.

“I can only go by the evidence of my own case load, and I would say in the spirit of fairness there should be a proper comprehensive and independent-of-government audit of what social services did with those cases that were handed over.

She also accused the Government and local authorities of having “no interest in admitting the scale of the problem in this country”.

Mr Yentob was asked by the committee if he felt he should have stepped down earlier because he had “passed his sell-by date”.

He said: “Yes, I probably should have stepped down earlier.

“However I do believe I was a chair who was necessary and that I had relationships with people who could help and fundraise. I had enough understanding of what was going on.

“It was a very challenging organisation. I felt that because it was so – and specially for the last few years – difficult, where we were trying to fundraise and trying to create a statutory model that would work more effectively, and clearly because of my experience, and because I was able to talk to people and interrogate them and because of the board I had behind me.

“So if you’re saying in a different world, would it have been better if I’d stepped down, if I could have found the right person to take over?

“And in fact Stuart Roden was going to take over

“He did not want me to stand down from the organisation, nor do I think the Cabinet Office did.”

Ms Batmanghelidjh responded to criticism over her workload and defended her capacity to both manage the company and work directly with clients.

Asked how she managed to balance her duties, she said her caseload would be kept an eye on daily and in terms of helping manage the company, she said: “We had all the right people in the right place.

“I think people have absolutely underestimated the rigorous structures that were in place in relation to Kids Company.

“All your questioning is based on elements of the media which have misrepresented the organisation.

“None of you have visited the organisation, you haven’t had the opportunity to talk to any of the staff.”

However Mr Yentob admitted that the last year had put a “huge pressure” on Ms Batmanghelidjh and said the answer was “yes and no” to whether having a chief executive with a hands-on role had created difficulties.

He said: “She was the emblematic figure – she was visited year after year by people from across the world.

“Certainly when we came to the last two years the stress and pressure on her was too much, but it seemed very difficult at that time to change the structure because there was also a level of trust between people.

“If these very experienced trustees have been there and they had been interrogating Camila … we would interrogate Camila like that, then we would meet the children, and we would understand that actually there was an argument for what she was doing.”

Mr Yentob said: “My only regret and my great regret and sadness is that perhaps we tried to look after too many children and we tried to do too much.

“I’m not saying that I don’t take responsibility for that.”

Of further funds from Downing Street he said: “I believe maybe we expected we would get this funding, and that’s another of my mistakes, that I did believe that.”

The pair responded to questions about the final £3m paid to the company contrary to advice of officials.

Both alleged that the Cabinet Office was aware that part of the funds would be used to pay staff’s salaries, despite the payment being made on conditions to the contrary.

Ms Batmanghelidjh responded simply: “Yes they did. They knew.”

Continuing, Ms Batmanghelidjh said the Cabinet Office accepted her flat as a surety in case she failed to raise the funds needed.

She said: “The deal was £3 million from government, £3 million from the philanthropists, and I was supposed to raise £8 million plus.

“I fell short by £350.000 and I put my flat up as a surety, which the Cabinet Office took.

“I had to submit the papers because they wanted absolute confirmation of the amounts of money that was being raised to see this deal through.

“I signed a letter saying that if I didn’t raise the remaining £350,000 that I would sell my flat and they could have the money.

“That’s how much rigour went into putting this package together.”

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