Jamail Newton was excluded from school at 11, dealing drugs at 14, and shot dead at 19, the Observer reported yesterday.
He was supported by London charity Kids Company after being excluded from his special school aged 11, where he was sent when his mainstream school couldn’t cope. His disabled mother was unable to look after him.
According to Kids Company founder Camila Batmanghelidjh, quoted in The Observer, Jamail was expunged from the records of his social services department ten days after being permanently excluded.
“He never heard from them again,” says Batmanghelidjh.
“Here is a child so vulnerable that even a special school cannot deal with him, and yet he is abandoned by every authority whose job it is to help him. It makes me furious but, unfortunately, it is far from rare,” she adds.
Kids Company worked intensively with Jamail, and were making progress. But on 1 November he was shot dead while trying to protect his friends from an armed gang.
If it is true that a vulnerable teenager was abandoned by authority, why is it left to the likes of Kids Company (annual budget £3 million, works directly with 6000 children a year) to pick up the pieces?