'Kids Company founder tried to glue a broken society back together with love'
When I first met Camila Batmanghelidjh it was in November 2000, in the desolate hours following the murder of Damilola Taylor.
Researching articles about the feral kids apparently running in gangs around the North Peckham estate, I found a network of damaged children living with addicted parents or on the streets, and youths who had run away from care.
One of those youngsters, a teenage girl, led me down side streets to some damp railway arches. Inside was a riot of colour. Graffiti-painted walls, the crack of pool tables, loud music, and Camila herself, dressed as she always was in flowing robes and headdress of clashing colours and a kaleidoscope of patterns.
Camila, who died on New Year’s Day, aged 61, once said her greatest fear was “beige”, and even 23 years ago, she divided opinion.
Her charity Kids Company used pioneering psychotherapeutic methods that still inform youth violence work today. But she also wasn’t afraid of using any method that would keep a child away from sexual abuse, substance-abusing adults and homelessness.
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Camila with David Cameron (Getty Images)She would shock, cajole, hector, plead, use emotional blackmail, leverage favours on behalf of “her” kids. And my God they needed a champion. These were children who had fallen so deeply through the cracks of statutory services it seemed at times they had become invisible to everyone but Camila. She showered them with a love and kindness most had never experienced before. In return, the kids’ loyalty to her was paramount. She could, and did, walk safely through gunfire.
Kids Company grew from the arches to a £20million charity with 600 staff, 500 trainees and 10,000 volunteers, feted by PM David Cameron and associated with A-list celebrities. Camila became what Cameron’s adviser Steve Hilton called “a poster child” for the Big Society. But there was a problem. The enormity of the work being done by her charity began to beg the question, why were so many children being failed by the state?
Cameron’s enemies spotted the unorthodox Kids Company’s potential to discredit Cameron. The vitriol unleashed was more than one woman could bear. She was the woman who “mesmerised” Cameron. She was compared to a “torrent of verbal ectoplasm” by a Tory MP, and falsely accused of child trafficking, running a cult and operating a brothel.
Whatever her flaws as a businesswoman, this was a cruel reward for a woman who literally changed tens of thousands of lives, not just in London but in Liverpool, Bristol and other cities. Camila told me she believed that the white, male-dominated establishment hated her, an Iranian-born woman. She said: “I’m seen as an out-of-control female white men have to control.”
Kids Company was shut down in a blaze of hostile publicity in August 2015. Kids were, as Camila told me, left screaming at the gates.
Kids Company staff at a rally in 2015 (Getty Images)Staff told me August was the most dangerous time to close because of the annual explosion of street violence. A 17-year-old boy named Jerrell Elie, a regular at Kids Company, died within days. Camila did all her work despite multiple serious health conditions. The last time I spoke to her she was unwell but I did not realise how unwell. I’m glad she lived to see High Court judge Mrs Justice Falk say in 2021 there had been no “dishonesty, bad faith or personal gain” and “no allegation of inappropriate expenditure” in relation to any children assisted by Kids Company.
She not only exonerated Camila but praised her for the “enormous dedication she showed to vulnerable young people over many years”. Camila was vindicated yet after years of heavy lifting for Cameron’s failed Big Society, she told me she never heard from him again.
When Kids Company closed, I saw a boy arguing with a local woman at the gates. Upset, he told me: “She was saying there was all drugs in there and sexual abuse, and it’s good it closed down. I told her, ‘Well, I went to university because of going there. They supported me every day and I never heard anything like that’.”
He shrugged and added: “Do you know social workers are not allowed to hug you? No one ever hugged me before Kids Company.”
RIP, Camila Batmanghelidjh – whose greatest crime was trying to glue a broken society back together with love.
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