Last night, Kids Company closed its doors for the last time. Mired in accusations of mismanagement and scandal, the charity founded by Camila Batmanghelidjh in 1996 has pulled the plug on a proposed restructure and folded completely. According to the founder, many marginalised and vulnerable children who have been beneficiaries will now find themselves abandoned.
Kids Company's downfall is complex, not least because of its relationship to government. David Cameron has regularly praised its work, and the charity has been heavily reliant on government funding – until this year it received an annual £5 million grant which was its main source of income. It is alleged that Cameron personally overruled decisions made by government departments to ensure Kids Company received funding.
Over the years Batmanghelidjh has been vocally critical of government policy and understanding around child welfare issues. Her version of events is that she angered politicians with her critique, and they in turn fought to have the funding removed. "That's the end of Kids Company and actually a bunch of rumour-mongering civil servants, ill-spirited ministers and the media, on the back of a range of rumours, put the nail in this organisation," she said. "There has been a very concerted campaign to discredit me as an individual and the organisation."
But serious questions have been raised about the management of funds by Kids Company. This piece gives just a small window into some of the issues. When a £3 million grant was used to clear an unpaid wage bill (rather than the restructure for which it was intended) the growing pressure on the charity became untenable.
Batmanghelidjh rose to particular prominence when Cameron used Kids Company as the flagship for his 'Big Society', and became a go-to media commentator on children's rights issues. In the past few weeks however, she's endured the same kind of hero-to-zero journey that the British media normally reserves for Reality TV celebrities. Almost instantly she has been re-branded a failure; cast as a maverick proprietor who held on to power for too long. It's as if her achievements – and there are many – have been airbrushed from history; as if the many thousands of young people who Kids Company have helped in the last two decades suddenly don't matter any more.
In 2013, Batmanghelidjh accepted an invitation to speak at the Youth Work Summit, the national Christian youth work event with which I'm involved. A noted orator, she gave what for me was the standout talk of the day, combining popular neuroscience with a challenge to 'love the darkness out of young people.' When we spoke before her address, she talked with some passion about the scale of the need Kids Company and other charities were addressing in the inner cities. She claimed that over 80 per cent of the young people arriving at their street-level centres were homeless; that 50 per cent of them had witnessed serious violent crime. She told the conference that "we live in a society where young people are abandoned by our political thinkers" and she was determined to make a difference.
So despite the allegations of mismanagement, I can't help but feel terribly sad about the closure. An charitable organisation with 600 staff and more than 10,000 volunteers is always going to face pressures, especially financial ones. Yes, in the end she failed to be a great Chief Executive, but I think we write off Batmanghelidjh's contribution to our society, and make her into some sort of simplistic 'fall guy' at our peril.
None of this however helps the real victims of Kids Company's closure. In a letter to today's Times, the NSPCC pointed out that in the media frenzy, "what receives little attention is what this means for the numerous very vulnerable children and indeed young people who turned to Kids Company for help and support often when they felt they had nowhere else to go." The charity's former staff have also expressed concern that young people, who may not trust statutory services or have relationships with other youth work organisations, will now feel left to fend for themselves. The reality is that many young people could find themselves back in the streets, back in untenable family situations or even gangs, as a result of the closure.
The material and social poverty in which so many of our children are forced to grow up is the real scandal, and we can't allow the downfall of an organisation and a celebrity individual to distract us from that.
In recent years, Christian youth work has struggled with the same issues of funding and resource as its secular counterparts. In part, that's because youth budgets tend to be the first thing that churches cut back on; it's also been felt by organisations whose religious foundations prevent them from accessing grant funding. There are already some incredible churches and organisations (XLP and Urban Hope to name but two in London) working hard to support young people on the margins; there are already Christian pioneers and dedicated volunteers who are pouring their lives into the same endeavour. But for the most part, children's and youth provision within the church is woefully under-funded, under-resourced and primarily focused on middle-class kids already in church families.
In her Youth Work Summit address, the non-religious Batmanghelidjh paid tribute to Christian youth work. "Our youth workers and our churches are an absolute lifeline," she said (at 07:15 in the video below). She said the role of youth work is to love young people whose lives have been marked by neglect, and added "ultimately the greatest love of all is the availability of the concept or the experience of God."
In the past 24 hours, a few people have wondered where the prophetic voice in this situation might come from. Could it be us? What would it take for us to transform our approach to youth and children's work so that our priority becomes the most marginalised children in our society? Can we rise to this, even if it means sacrifice? Even if it means life will be a bit less comfortable for the children and young people in our youth groups? As the death of Kids Company creates a vacuum of support for some of the most vulnerable, surely it's up to the church to rise up again – as it has throughout modern history – to fill it.
Martin Saunders is a Contributing Editor for Christian Today and the Deputy CEO of Youthscape. You can follow him on Twitter: @martinsaunders
