David Cameron and Michael Gove showered praise on the work of Kids Company in private correspondence in the 18 months before the children’s charity folded in August this year, according to documents that have been presented to a committee of MPs.
Correspondence submitted to the Commons public administration and constitutional affairs select committee before a meeting on Thursday morning reveals that the prime minister said he wanted to work in partnership with the charity in a letter to its chief executive, Camila Batmanghelidjh, in January 2014.
“I have always admired the work of Kids Company and the two reports you sent to me reinforce my belief in the importance of supporting the most vulnerable children and young people in our country,” the prime minister wrote.
Cameron added that the reports – believed to be independent academic studies that praised the charity’s working methods – had led him to ask the Cabinet Office to work closely with Kids Company to help it pursue “our common goals”.
Batmanghelidjh and the charity’s chair, the broadcaster Alan Yentob, are to be questioned in person by MPs on Thursday morning about events leading up to the closure of Kids Company and its relationship with successive governments.
Kids Company came under fire again on Wednesday night from a BBC Newsnight and BuzzFeed report which claimed that problems with management and financial controls at Kids Company were raised by two other charities more than 13 years ago.
The report said that the Pilgrim Trust, a charitable foundation, wrote to the Charity Commission in 2002 about its concerns that a £60,000 grant it gave to Kids Company had not been used in the way it intended.
A second report, by the analysts New Philanthropy Capital, dating back to 2006 and never published but sent to Kids Company trustees, raised concerns about weak finances and lack of evidence about outcomes. Kids Company said on Wednesday night that the reports were 13 and nine years old respectively and it had disputed the findings at the time.
Batmanghelidjh is expected to argue in front of MPs that although the charity had been in financial straits as a result of growing demand for its services, the dominant media narrative of a chaotically run charity with dubious working methods is not supported by the evidence.
In May 2014, Michael Gove, the then education secretary, wrote to one of the charity’s biggest private donors: “The inspirational work that Kids Company do with young people in our cities is a credit both to them and our country.”
Gove’s letter, to an unnamed person who is believed to be a Conservative donor and supporter, notes that he was “glad to read” that a Department for Education audit of Kids Company had been successful and that, as a result, a Cabinet Office grant for the charity had got the go-ahead.
He added that he was “sincerely pleased” that the recent uncertainty about the future of the charity had been “laid to rest”.
The evidence submitted to MPs shows that the charity worked closely with ministers and officials over the last 12 months of its existence, briefing them extensively about its cashflow problems, which the charity says were caused by a surge in demand for its services for maltreated and neglected children.
The Cabinet Office minister, Oliver Letwin, is understood to have met frequently with Batmanghelidjh over the final few months of the charity’s existence and, according to evidence shown to MPs, agreed that further substantial state support was needed.
Although ministers informed Kids Company in December that it would no longer receive continuing grant support after April 2015, the government subsequently agreed a £3m one-off payment to finance a survival plan under which the charity would halve in size and Batmanghelidjh would step down as chief executive.
However, within hours of the money being deposited on 30 July, the BBC reported that the Metropolitan police’s sexual offences, exploitation and child abuse team was investigating allegations of crimes committed on Kids Company premises. Philanthropists who had pledged millions of pounds pulled out and the charity shut its doors on 5 August.
Batmanghelidjh founded Kids Company nearly 20 years ago. It provided care, support and education for around 36,000 young people and their relatives in London, Bristol and Liverpool. Many of its clients experienced sexual abuse, violence, addiction, mental illness and family instability.
Iranian-born Batmanghelidjh, who is a trained psychotherapist, was courted by Cameron when he was in opposition, and was initially a supporter of his Big Society project. But in recent years she has been critical of the government’s austerity policies and what she sees as its failure to invest properly in child protection.
She raised over £150m in public donations for Kids Company over the years. The charity’s celebrity supporters and donors included Coldplay, Damien Hirst, the comedian Michael McIntyre, JK Rowling and Emma Thompson.
