Kids Company chief defends failure to pass all cases to councils

Appearing in front of the public administration and constitutional affairs select committee on Thursday, Batmanghelidjh defended the decision not to hand over information about all the clients it had on its books, despite councils pledging to support the children that relied on its services in the wake of its closure in August.

But Paul Flynn, Labour MP for Newport West, questioned why the number of cases referred to councils was substantially lower than the number of children and young people the charity claimed to support.

The charity claimed to work with 36,000 children and young people a year, half or which were high risk. However, a parliamentary answer from minister for civil society Rob Wilson published last month showed 1,842 files had been transferred from Kids Company to local authoritires for review.

In response Batmanghelidjh said: “When the authorities wanted us to hand cases over they had a telephone meeting with us where they actually described the kinds of cases that they wanted to take.

“They didn’t want any people with no status unless there was a child protection issue and consequently that narrowed down our referrals.

“They were also prepared to look at people with extreme mental health difficulties and that’s what we did, we narrowed down the client group to what they were prepared to take and that’s what we handed over.”

In a three-hour evidence session, Batmanghelidjh told the committee that the main reason Kids Company struggled for cash was because it was supporting children with "extreme risks" and high levels of need that meant they should have been cared for by councils.

She also reiterated her claim that the charity shut because of the "unfounded" sexual abuse allegations, not because of how it was run.

The committee, which is investigating the relationship between the charity and government, also heard from Kids Company chair of trustees Alan Yentob, who admitted that it “tried to look after too many children and do too much”.  

He conceded, however, that he regretted not responding to challenges and restructuring the charity earlier. He said he wished the charity had not made assumptions that it would continue to receive government funding.

"I probably should have stepped down earlier,” said Yentob, who had been in the post since 2002.

He admitted that the charity hadn’t kept enough financial reserves, and that he had invested £250,000 of his own money into the charity.

However, he also told the committee that the closure led to four suicide attempts, stabbings and a murder, due to an “absence of a place for these children to go”.

"Five days after Kids Company closed a boy was murdered. He was going to the crime prevention centres which were closed."

Kids Company collapsed after sexual allegations were made against it, and days after receiving a £3m grant from the Cabinet Office.