As funding for Kids Company increased, so too did the number of children under its care. In 2009 the charity cared for 14,000 children. This rose to 36,000 by 2013. To account for the growth in children under care in the same period, the number of average weekly full-time employees increased from 231 to 495.
Sorry, don’t really trust those numbers of children. That there’s lost waifs and orphans out there I don’t doubt, nor the moral duty of doing something about it all. But 36,000 in only two cities?
Naaah. Scale that up to the country and we’re talking about 300 k or so. Or, around and about, an entire yearly cohort of all the children in the country. Or 5 or 6% of all children.
Naaah.
I hold no brief for them, but where do you get “only two cities”?
According to this BBC report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33813048
“Kids Company provided practical, emotional and educational support… (blah blah) …across London, with centres in Liverpool and Bristol.”
So your point may stand, to within the accuracy expected on the back of an envelope, while being 50-100% out (depending on which city you missed out- I suspect London).
Perhaps the fact the charity was handing out packets of money with few questions asked as something to do with these numbers.
I wonder how may middle class Tarquins were rubbing mud into their hair and going to Primark for a hoody so they could look street enough to score some easy wacky backy money.
OK, I admit it, I am a little bit cynical about this situation.
“the number of average weekly full-time employees ”
Does these mean they employed only average people??
If one were being charitable, one could suppose that they chose those two cities because the problems were greatest there. If that’s so, then extrapolating from those two to the whole country would overstate the scale of the problem.
Then again, I’m assuming a level of thoughtful planning that doesn’t seem to have been in evidence so far.
Like so many statistics it looks like it is plucked out of thin air – but then so much of the ‘charitable’ sector is state funded these people become de facto employees with the same desire for magic money tree economics, the same belief in the ‘Curajus state’ the same desire to have someone else pay in perpetuity for them to amuse themselves. Once again, I find my self in agreement with Mr Ecks of this parish – the cancer is a manifestation of socialism and it must be forcefully excised from the body politic….
From the Telegraph-
“She seemed to have favourites and if you weren’t one that was made clear.”
Oh, now there’s a surprise.
Camilla looks as if she has been eating the children….
They don’t have to be ‘waifs or orphans’ to fall under the tender mercies of Kid’s Company, do they?
Yes, if you hand out envelopes stuffed with cash I’m not surprised their clientele grew quickly.
I’m sure I read somewhere that children who knew children who had seen children across the road who were friends with children who knew a vulnerable child were counted among those being looked after.
I read somewhere else,BBC I think, that they had 11 centres across London and Bristol and an outreach project in Liverpool. So realistically it’s 2 and bit cities if you are being generous. Also claimed that at the end they had 650 staff which would mean only 1 staff member per 55 kids for 36,000 number. I suspect that the 6,000 at risk number used yesterday is closer to the real current number and 36,000 is some aggregate last x years number where everyone who they check in with occasionally after they left the program is counted.
so, out of 36,000 kids that were helped, and presumably thousands of parents involved, 150 people turned up to a protest, many of them workers?
The 36,000 number almost certainly includes non-children. See
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33813048
Kate explained that some of those attending Kids Company with her were not “kids” but men in their 20s.
“Everyone was way older, they are all adult, not kids, they shouldn’t be there. I was intimidated anyway, I felt intimidated by these men,” she said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/society/11717413/Kids-Company-Did-good-PR-mask-deeper-failings.html