Youth charity closes after £ 3m bail- out by ministers
Nearly 20 years after starting the charity Kids Company, its flamboyant founder Camila Batmanghelidjh is now in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons
MINISTERS were slammed last night after the charity Kids Company closed just days after being gifted a £ 3million government grant.
Cabinet Office ministers Oliver Letwin and Matthew Hancock agreed the cash despite objections from a senior civil servant and a former minister who said it would not give “value for money”.
The organisation, which works with 36,000 vulnerable children and young people, has been plagued by allegations of bad financial management, prompting its high- profile founder Camila Batmanghelidjh to quit as chief executive.
It received the grant last week after agreeing to make changes in leadership, management and governance, but in an email Ms Batmanghelidjh told staff they would be paid using some of the money.
Ex- children’s minister Tim Loughton told BBC Radio 4’ s Today programme yesterday that when taxpayers’ money is being used the Government needs to see “real and sustainable results, and I was never convinced of that”.
Ms Batmanghelidjh last night blamed “rumour- mongering” and “ill- spirited ministers” for forcing the charity to close and “abandon a lot of children”.
A source said warnings were sounded as far back as the Labour government but Kids Company “enjoyed the protection of Downing Street, under Gordon Brown and David Cameron”.
A Government spokesman said it was working with local authorities to ensure the young people the charity had helped had access to services.
LAST night a charity called Kids Company closed its doors for the last time, a victim of alleged financial mismanagement, in- house whistle- blowers and perhaps the hubris of its £ 90,000a- year founder.
Camila Batmanghelidjh, the woman who founded the charity in six converted railway arches in south London in 1996 to help disadvantaged youngsters, became known as the Angel of Peckham thanks to her efforts on behalf of thousands of children.
Today her life’s work is in tatters. A “restructuring specialist” has moved in to unravel what has happened to an organisation that received £ 40 million in government grants over the past decade plus up to twice as much from private donors. A probe has been launched into the possible improper use of the latest £ 3million of public money and police have begun an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse.
So just who is this woman who dresses in a way that puts Joseph And His Amazing Technicolo r Dreamcoat in the shade, woos celebrities with the ease of a latter- day Warren Beatty and had the Prime Minister so under her spell that he would over- rule colleagues to please her?
Camila Batmanghelidjh was born in Tehran in 1963. She’s not sure when because of the circumstances of her birth. “I was premature by two and a half months,” she told a news paper last year. “They thought I was going to die and sent me home without even registering my birth so I don’t know my birthday. My mother can’t remember.”
Her mother Lucile, who is Belgian, met her Iranian father Fereydoon when he was training to be a doctor at St Mary’s Paddington .
Fereydoon was from a politically prominent family and after practising medicine in England he returned to Iran where he played a key role in developing hospitals . He was also responsible for the construction of the Ice Palace complex, which his daughter remembers well.
“My father built one of the biggest sports centres in the Middle East with ice rinks and swimming pools, a dry ski resort and shooting ranges,” she once said.
Fereydoon’s activities made him one of the country’s wealthiest men and the family enjoyed an affl uent lifestyle. Young Camila was brought up in a palatial home and driven everywhere by two police bodyguards.
A self- confessed “educational failure” she was sent to a special school in Switzerland at the age of nine before being switched to the £ 32,000- a- year Sherborne school for girls in Dorset.
It was while she was there that the shah of Iran was overthrown by an Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini and her father was thrown into Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
Rumours that he had been killed led to Camila’s older sister Lila, who had already been showing signs of mental instability , throwing herself under a train. While she survived that suicide attempt her condition worsened and soon afterwards she took an overdose and died.
Fortunately for Camila the manager of the British bank where her father had an overseas account agreed to cover her outstanding school fees and she went on to study at Warwick University where she overcame what she had identifi ed as dyslexia and earned a fi rst - class degree in theatre and dramatic arts. It was in Warwick’s canteen that she was reunited with her father in 1982 following his release after two years incarceration.
Camila went on to train as a psychotherapist and began counselling children referred to her by local authorities. But she soon became frustrated by the number of her clients who dropped out.
“I realised the system was fl awed because it assumed there was always a responsible adult to take the children to sessions .”
SHE also revealed: “I wanted to set up a structure where the children could ask for help directly , to develop something that would meet these children’s needs where they were.”
At 25 she stopped paying the mortgage on her fl at in West Hampstead, London and used the money to set up the charity ThePlace2Be. It survives to this day but Camila was only saved from a repossession by the ruling of a sympathetic judge.
She went on to establish Kids GOOD TIMES: Camila with her A- lister friends and supporters in 2008, above left; Prince Charles plays table football at The Kids Company in Camberwell watched by the Duchess of Cornwall in 2009, left Company and her fl amboyant style and charisma soon attracted big- name donors. Artist Damien Hirst donated and Sting and his wife Trudie Styler offered their Wiltshire house for an open day. Gwyneth Paltrow and her then husband Chris Martin funded a street- level centre.
The BBC’s creative director Alan Yentob came on board as chairman and Sunetra Atkinson, the estranged wife of Rowan Atkinson, agreed to be a trustee. Meanwhile a string of A- listers, including JK Rowling, Stephen Fry, Helen Mirren and Gordon Ramsay all offered support.
But the really big fi sh proved to be Prince Charles who, after an impromptu chat with Camila in the back of his car, opened doors for her in the City.
Camila was showered with awards. Ernst and Young made her its social entrepreneur of the year in 2005. Twelve months later she was named Woman Of The Year. And in 2013 she achieved the double whammy of a CBE and a listing of the 100 most powerful women in the UK. A painting of her was even commissioned for the National Portrait Gallery.
None of this will mean much to her today as she ponders the destruction of her dream.