Interview: Camilla Batmanghelidjh, Founder, Kid's Company

Kids Company is a charity founded by Camila Batmanghelidjh in 1996 in order to provide practical, emotional and educational support to vulnerable inner-city children and young people.

Many of the 13,500 children reached by Kids Company’s services have experienced severe and multiple trauma. Often these are ‘lone children’ living in chronic deprivation, with little or no support from the adults in their family. Some are young carers struggling to look after younger siblings or parents who are unable to care for them, and many have been forced into drug running, gangs, or prostitution as the only means of survival in their depleted communities.
Kids Company operates through a street level drop-in centre (the Arches II), a post-16 educational institution (the Urban Academy) and a therapy centre (the Heart Yard) in South London, as well as offering therapeutic and social work services in over 30 schools.

We aim to provide an environment where relationships of empathy and attachment can be fostered between children and trusted adults. The support we offer is tailored to the needs of each individual child. We offer unrelenting love for every child, whatever it takes: no matter how disturbed a child is, they will never be turned away.

We are constantly inspired by the courage and dignity expressed by vulnerable children in the face of overwhelming challenges, and in everything we do the child is put first. It is our belief that the public need to be frightened for these children, rather than frightened of them.

Kids Company was awarded the Liberty and Justice Human Rights Award, 2007.

The need for Kids Company

More than 95% of the children and young people we support come to us seeking help, or are referred by their peers; 97% say that Kids Company is effective. Research shows that young people coming to Kids Company face the following difficulties:

• 84% - homelessness - a deeply traumatic and destabilizing experience.
• 82% - substance misuse - this is often a reaction to emotional distress and can indicate a child’s vulnerability to being drawn into the criminal world of drug dealing and taking.
• 81% - criminal involvement, often to feed and clothe younger siblings.
• 83% - sustained, complex trauma during childhood.
• 87% - emotional difficulties and mental health problems.
• 39% - young carers struggling to cope.

Kids’ achievements

The University of London’s 2008 study found that Kids Company had helped:

• 95% improved their relationships
• 81% reintegrated into education, training or employment
• 86% engaged in work experience
• 90% reduced their involvement in criminal activity
• 94% reduced their level of substance misuse
• 89% moved away from crime.

Research by University of London, 2008

At Kids Company in 2008

• 12,000 children and young people accessed our services
• 5000 volunteers gave us their time, including 4292 corporate volunteers from 91 companies.
• 1800 children and young people with nowhere else to go came to our centre on Christmas day.