and the liberal left weeped........
'Without it, I would have given up': three women on how Kids Company helped them Wednesday 15 July 2015
With the government threatening to withold £3m in funding unless its founder, Camila Batmanghelidjh, steps down, Kids Company is facing a cash crisis. But what do the people it reaches out to make of this controversial children’s charity?
It’s been a noisy couple of weeks for Kids Company. Since it was reported that the Cabinet Office was withholding £3m from the once-feted charity unless its chief executive, Camila Batmanghelidjh, stepped down, celebrities, including designers Bella Freud and Stella McCartney have rushed to her defence. The organisation, specialising in therapeutic support for troubled children, has maintained support from a number of prominent backers who have donated millions in the past. Batmanghelidjh, 52, vociferously denies claims of mismanagement and insists that she won’t be pushed out but had always planned to leave the role next year. “Ugly games” are being played in an effort to silence her “uncomfortable” message that vulnerable children are going unprotected, she says.
Kids Company has expanded rapidly in recent years: the result, it says, of a huge rise in demand from young people who have been turned away from mainstream services. Now Batmanghelidjh warns that the charity is likely to halve in size, with the loss of hundreds of staff, as it attempts to ward off a serious financial crisis. But, with 650 staff and an income reported at £23m in 2013, what does its work look like on the ground? Three young people who have been through Kids Company’s doors tell us what the charity’s intervention meant for them.
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http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015 ... elped-them
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