Tag: Home News

Kids Company: Alan Yentob under fire from MPs for ‘catalogue of failure’ at charity

Former trustees of Kids Company have accused MPs behind a highly critical report of “naively” accepting criticisms made by people hostile to the charity.

Alan Yentob, the charity’s former chairman, will be accused of presiding over an “extraordinary catalogue of failure” and “financial mismanagement” that let down vulnerable children and ultimately led to the organisation’s collapse.
In a damming report, Parliament’s Public Administration Committee said Mr Yentob was “negligent” and “suspended (his) critical faculties”, by allowing Kids Company’s charismatic chief executive, Camila Batmanghelidjh, to spend millions of pounds with little or no oversight.

But in a robust statement, the former trustees of Kids Company including Mr Yentob accused MPs of having “naively accepted allegations made in the media and by a small number of individuals, some with vested interests in damaging Kids Company and its much-praised model of loving care and practical support” at the expense of the evidence of expert witnesses.

“It is a regrettable feature of British democracy that the committee can use the curtain of parliamentary privilege to produce what is an irresponsible report, immune from the defamation claims that would inevitably follow without this privilege,” they said.

Mr Yentob and the other trustees described the report as “inaccurate, unbalanced and irresponsible”.

The report also castigated politicians from the Prime Minister down for being “captivated” by Ms Batmanghelidjh and authorising multi-million pound grants to the charity “outside the usual decision-making process”.

This, it added, was done on the basis of “little more than their relationship with a charismatic leader, small-scale studies and anecdotes”.

The committee also concluded that Kids Company helped just a fraction of the children it claimed to be working with – in some cases counting a whole class of children as “clients” if they benefited from work with just one individual. It added that while Kids Company said it was working with 18,000 children, only 1,900 youngsters were passed onto Southwark Council when the organisation closed last August.

The charity, it said, misused funds to pay for luxury items for clients that “diverted” money from other projects.

Charities who allowed scandalous fundraising methods ‘incompetent or willfully blind’

Charity bosses who allowed scandalous fundraising methods to be used were either “incompetent or wilfully blind” and are on their last chance to “put their house in order”, a committee has warned.

In a damning assessment of the practices used by some of the biggest names to bring in cash, MPs said the “sorry episode” had damaged the reputations of charities across the board.

Trustees must now take proper control of the methods their organisation use or face statutory regulation, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) said.

MPs heard that some charities, including Great Ormond Street Hospital and Macmillan Cancer Support, made it difficult or impossible for donors to block further communication from them or other charities.

Personal information ended up with scamming companies after being sold on by some charities while vulnerable and elderly people were seen as “fair targets” by some organisations, they were told.
The committee also heard an undercover investigation by the Daily Mail found telephone fundraising contractor GoGen ignored the telephone preference service that allows customers to opt out of receiving unsolicited calls.

It also had a script to allow fundraisers to continue to press for a donation even after discovering a vulnerable individual was confused or suffered from dementia.

MPs said they had “no doubt” that most UK charities did not engage in such practices but the behaviour of some had damaged the reputation of all and made it harder for them to raise money.

The report found fundraising is “increasingly competitive” and a large charity can spend more than £20 million a year on trying to bolster its coffers.
Fundraising practices were thrust into the spotlight last year after widespread public concern over the death of 92-year-old Olive Cooke, one of Britain’s oldest and longest-serving poppy sellers.

After the pensioner took her own life, her family described how she had been receiving repeated requests from charities for donations with up to 267 letters a month as well as regular phone calls.

During the PACAC’s investigation a number of charity bosses admitted there were flaws in their governance.

Oxfam chairwoman Karen Brown told MPs “our monitoring procedures were not adequate to the task” while RSPCA chairwoman Daphne Harris said she “did not know that this had happened” after allegations that the personal data of dementia sufferer Samuel Rae had been repeatedly bought and sold by charities and companies emerged.