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Kids: Child Protection in Britain: The Truth
What was lost when Kids Company imploded last summer? More than reputations. The charity's founding vision, that there is a gap called love in how the state responds to abused and abandoned children, also vanished.
In this book, the founder of Kids Company lays out the thinking behind a model of care that broke the cycle of neglect for thousands of vulnerable children. She reveals the true scale of Britain's failure in children's services, making public two decades of candid exchanges with Prime Ministers and senior politicians to explain why the sector has not improved since Victorian times. She also reveals the deceits used by local authorities to stop the magnitude of the problem becoming known.
This is a book of hope, however. Calling on a plethora of moving case histories, it presents the science that gives cause for optimism; proof that even the most troubled young lives can be turned around. Looking forward rather than back, the book shows how a new model of support could be cheaper and far more effective than existing provision.
Kids Company has gone. And yet something like it must be the future. It is imperative that the breakthroughs in understanding that came from its work are now shared with the widest audience.
This book is an unusual collaboration between two outstanding individuals. One author is Camila Batmanghelidjh, who spent thirty years working with troubled families. The other is an award-winning journalist, Tim Rayment, who was sent to investigate Camila but decided instead that the real public interest lay in hearing her vital, life-changing message.
384 pages, Hardcover
Published May 1, 2018
8 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 5, 2020
Another time, another place.
“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members”
-Mahatma Gandhi-
This book is an horrific account and condemnation of how sections of a “civilized” society wilfully ignored an underclass of exploited, abused and disturbed children, and how over a period of 18 years, the charity Kids Company and their controversial leader, Camila Batmanghelidj (Camila B), fought to protect and nurture them before being forced to close in 2015. Some may see it as her attempt at vindication, and indeed there is another version of her story not to be found in the book. It includes bullying the government by threatening to release a crime wave of damaged children on London if funding was not available and paying donated money for children to acquire drugs. Others may disagree with her controversial methods such as children self-referring themselves, peculiar but recorded and justified expenditures and some unusual techniques and psychological analysis. In some ways this is a sideshow debate because this is an account that shows that the UK has at best moved sideways from the Victorian workhouse and the ability to help some 30,000 disadvantaged and distressed children by Kids Company, called “clients”, is an extraordinary achievement.
I don’t think this is a book that can easily be read at one go. As the horrific layers of depravity unfold, it’s necessary to stop and breathe fresh air or just weep. But most readers will finish the book because it dawns on them that prematurely curtailing the narrative is an act of denial: exactly what the failing care institutions, politicians and others did. If it hadn’t been for the determination of Camila B to tell her story, for Sunday Times journalist Tim Rayment (co-author of the book), and some suspicions by The Guardian, the horrific stories of neglected children, hunger, squalor, child prostitution, incest, drugs, gang violence, and unimaginable (to most) poverty that are profound and deeply disturbing, would have been swept away as an inconvenience. I would have liked to have provided a few quotations of real children’s stories from the book, but they are too adult, bestial and shocking in nature for an open book review.
From modest beginnings, Kids Company became a surrogate not only for the children but for the state. Local councils were able to set the bar ever higher for assisting these vulnerable children so they didn’t count as a recorded statistic. They abrogated their legal and moral responsibilities and exclude these children from their minds and financially stretched spreadsheets, often because they knew Kids Company was there as some sort of a backstop. Many politicians turned a blind eye, obfuscated, and supported or initiated endless commissioned reports sometimes “rewritten” to suit their spin. They demanded ever increasing financial and other accountability, even though Kids Company was both independently audited, inspected and passed or exceeded on every occasion. They also ignored the issues as a perceived liability for re-election. All this interference or passivity, when the government was an often unwilling and vacillating donor and only a minority stakeholder in funding until towards the end when private donors were frightened away. The vast majority of donations for most of the life of Kids Company came from private charitable efforts and not from flimsy and unreliable government money, sent to salve conscience The sometimes-vindictive demands for accountability from government grew proportionately to the growth of Kids Company as did the promises of funding that was frequently unrealized, changed downwards, or provided after it was too close to the demise to be of much use.
There are heroes in this book and some very surprising ones, particularly some police on the front line distraught at what they were observing and some enlightened judges, the extraordinary generosity of some philanthropists including rock stars and royalty, conscientious trustees, senior members of the medical community and a few enlightened politicians. Not least were the dedicated staff of Kids Company. It’s particularly disingenuous to the donors, individuals and major British companies alike, and often at the vanguard of British life, to assume that they did not carry out due diligence of their own before giving. They presumably concluded they were not supporting a corrupt and out of control organization.
Kids Company kept growing and spreading out from its original origins in London. The needs were insatiable. It became increasingly difficult for government at all levels to ignore their own failing of this embarrassing underclass. At that point, the politicians started to use other tried and tested methods to suppress, and in particular to solicit the press. One journalist, Goslett, proved particularly valuable to them. The British public is used to headline-grabbing sleazy tabloids, but Goslett is a much more dangerous species, a self-seeking and loathsome lizard with a veneer of credibility, and the mainstream heavyweight press largely fell for his oversized ambitions and slapdash work in the pursuit of newsworthiness. For his many faults, Goslett, was at least a privately paid or self-financing his career, but the ultimate destruction of Kids Company came from the BBC on Newsnight, who, based on unresearched hearsay, accused Kids Company of fostering sexual abuse and a catalogue of other crimes, all later proven false. Much of the evidence was based on orchestrated leaks and egregious breaches of sensitive confidentialities. The BBC is funded, theoretically at least, by the taxpayer but it becomes clear that the puppeteers are in Whitehall not least by review of expenditures but by other “friendly” persuasion tactics. The establishment wasn’t just avoiding shame by their ineptitude but were clearly rattled, made worse by the posthumous exposure of the paedophile and entertainer, Sir “Jimmy Savile” OBE. KCSG (died 2011), who defiled at least several hundred minors. The book also alleges, but doesn’t substantiate, that part of the cover up of paedophilia, high-ranking access to drugs and other acts of moral turpitude, was to protect key judges, police officers, politicians and members of the House of Lords. Four years earlier, damning information about Savile and his activities at Dunford Approved School For Girls had been scheduled for showing by the BBC on, yes, the previously mentioned Newsnight programme, but it was pulled and never shown. Even after the collapse of Kids Company, the subsequent investigations were tainted by accidentally lost and missing documents and in one case an absurd inquiry as to whether funding had been misused for the purchase of a hamburger. Camila B had got too big for her boots, had to burned by the establishment, and was never going to be a Phoenix. Vindictiveness is another trait of an uncivilized society.
The book isn’t all bleak. Some clients went on to higher education and into well paid jobs, many more were able to leave the underclass forever, and even more were saved from the worst of deprivation or were able to save, or find, themselves.
“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members”
-Mahatma Gandhi-
This book is an horrific account and condemnation of how sections of a “civilized” society wilfully ignored an underclass of exploited, abused and disturbed children, and how over a period of 18 years, the charity Kids Company and their controversial leader, Camila Batmanghelidj (Camila B), fought to protect and nurture them before being forced to close in 2015. Some may see it as her attempt at vindication, and indeed there is another version of her story not to be found in the book. It includes bullying the government by threatening to release a crime wave of damaged children on London if funding was not available and paying donated money for children to acquire drugs. Others may disagree with her controversial methods such as children self-referring themselves, peculiar but recorded and justified expenditures and some unusual techniques and psychological analysis. In some ways this is a sideshow debate because this is an account that shows that the UK has at best moved sideways from the Victorian workhouse and the ability to help some 30,000 disadvantaged and distressed children by Kids Company, called “clients”, is an extraordinary achievement.
I don’t think this is a book that can easily be read at one go. As the horrific layers of depravity unfold, it’s necessary to stop and breathe fresh air or just weep. But most readers will finish the book because it dawns on them that prematurely curtailing the narrative is an act of denial: exactly what the failing care institutions, politicians and others did. If it hadn’t been for the determination of Camila B to tell her story, for Sunday Times journalist Tim Rayment (co-author of the book), and some suspicions by The Guardian, the horrific stories of neglected children, hunger, squalor, child prostitution, incest, drugs, gang violence, and unimaginable (to most) poverty that are profound and deeply disturbing, would have been swept away as an inconvenience. I would have liked to have provided a few quotations of real children’s stories from the book, but they are too adult, bestial and shocking in nature for an open book review.
From modest beginnings, Kids Company became a surrogate not only for the children but for the state. Local councils were able to set the bar ever higher for assisting these vulnerable children so they didn’t count as a recorded statistic. They abrogated their legal and moral responsibilities and exclude these children from their minds and financially stretched spreadsheets, often because they knew Kids Company was there as some sort of a backstop. Many politicians turned a blind eye, obfuscated, and supported or initiated endless commissioned reports sometimes “rewritten” to suit their spin. They demanded ever increasing financial and other accountability, even though Kids Company was both independently audited, inspected and passed or exceeded on every occasion. They also ignored the issues as a perceived liability for re-election. All this interference or passivity, when the government was an often unwilling and vacillating donor and only a minority stakeholder in funding until towards the end when private donors were frightened away. The vast majority of donations for most of the life of Kids Company came from private charitable efforts and not from flimsy and unreliable government money, sent to salve conscience The sometimes-vindictive demands for accountability from government grew proportionately to the growth of Kids Company as did the promises of funding that was frequently unrealized, changed downwards, or provided after it was too close to the demise to be of much use.
There are heroes in this book and some very surprising ones, particularly some police on the front line distraught at what they were observing and some enlightened judges, the extraordinary generosity of some philanthropists including rock stars and royalty, conscientious trustees, senior members of the medical community and a few enlightened politicians. Not least were the dedicated staff of Kids Company. It’s particularly disingenuous to the donors, individuals and major British companies alike, and often at the vanguard of British life, to assume that they did not carry out due diligence of their own before giving. They presumably concluded they were not supporting a corrupt and out of control organization.
Kids Company kept growing and spreading out from its original origins in London. The needs were insatiable. It became increasingly difficult for government at all levels to ignore their own failing of this embarrassing underclass. At that point, the politicians started to use other tried and tested methods to suppress, and in particular to solicit the press. One journalist, Goslett, proved particularly valuable to them. The British public is used to headline-grabbing sleazy tabloids, but Goslett is a much more dangerous species, a self-seeking and loathsome lizard with a veneer of credibility, and the mainstream heavyweight press largely fell for his oversized ambitions and slapdash work in the pursuit of newsworthiness. For his many faults, Goslett, was at least a privately paid or self-financing his career, but the ultimate destruction of Kids Company came from the BBC on Newsnight, who, based on unresearched hearsay, accused Kids Company of fostering sexual abuse and a catalogue of other crimes, all later proven false. Much of the evidence was based on orchestrated leaks and egregious breaches of sensitive confidentialities. The BBC is funded, theoretically at least, by the taxpayer but it becomes clear that the puppeteers are in Whitehall not least by review of expenditures but by other “friendly” persuasion tactics. The establishment wasn’t just avoiding shame by their ineptitude but were clearly rattled, made worse by the posthumous exposure of the paedophile and entertainer, Sir “Jimmy Savile” OBE. KCSG (died 2011), who defiled at least several hundred minors. The book also alleges, but doesn’t substantiate, that part of the cover up of paedophilia, high-ranking access to drugs and other acts of moral turpitude, was to protect key judges, police officers, politicians and members of the House of Lords. Four years earlier, damning information about Savile and his activities at Dunford Approved School For Girls had been scheduled for showing by the BBC on, yes, the previously mentioned Newsnight programme, but it was pulled and never shown. Even after the collapse of Kids Company, the subsequent investigations were tainted by accidentally lost and missing documents and in one case an absurd inquiry as to whether funding had been misused for the purchase of a hamburger. Camila B had got too big for her boots, had to burned by the establishment, and was never going to be a Phoenix. Vindictiveness is another trait of an uncivilized society.
The book isn’t all bleak. Some clients went on to higher education and into well paid jobs, many more were able to leave the underclass forever, and even more were saved from the worst of deprivation or were able to save, or find, themselves.
April 18, 2022
As a trainee social worker this book taught me so much! I couldn’t believe the sheer disgrace of the government and the state of British child protection, Camila did everything she could to keep the charity open and she helped so many children! She is one strong lady who is not afraid to fight for what she believe in! It is a shame that kids company is no longer with us but i hope the model can be used in so many local authority’s for years to come!
November 24, 2017
This opened my eyes to issues in child protection in this country. It was a fascinating read although Camila Batmanghelidjh obviously has her own agenda and is aiming to exonerate Kids Company. I knew very little about this before and everything she said seemed eminently reasonable to me.
May 1, 2023
Camila is an outstanding woman - unravels some awful truths about the government, as well as the state of our child social care system
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews