Kids Company founder Camila Batmanghelidjh is one of those people you either like or loathe.
I can’t help liking her and I think social care could do with a few more eccentric characters like her to shake things up a bit. But whatever your views on Camila and her unorthodox approach to youth work, it’s hard not to admire her ability to generate headlines.
She managed to get a massive article in the Observer on Sunday as well as a prime slot on Radio 4’s Today programme highlighting her organisation’s funding crisis and demanding government money.
Civitas’ Robert Whelan weighed in with his view that charities should rely on fundraising rather than “taxpayers’” cash. It’s the age old argument about how far voluntary organisations go in providing services on behalf of statutory organisations.
What Kids Company does is not an add on but a vital service for some of the most social excluded young people in the capital. It would be a tragedy if, as Camila (pictured right) warns, it had to close next March.
But somehow I don’t think the government is going to let that happen.