Troubled kids back on the rails, with a little bit of love
When Camila Batmanghelidjh enters a room, it is as if the lights have been switched on, her trademark multi-coloured flowing dresses, turban and fingerless gloves a mere portent of the explosive riot of colour and motifs that make up her personality.
The Iranian born, British psychotherapist – one of London's best-known and most successful social entrepreneurs – is the founder of a revolutionary charity, KidsCompany. In just 12 years, it has morphed from a humble drop-in centre for a handful of street kids to a 10 million ($21 million) a year powerhouse that looks after 12,000 of the city's most traumatised, distressed – and often violent – children.
Marrying the latest understanding of neurobiology and brain development with social work loosely based on principles of attachment parenting, KidsCompany workers, including teams of psychologists and therapists, are now entrenched in 37 London schools. They also run a thriving street-level drop-in centre, which is open year round, as well as a specialist education academy for kids over 16. The services are unique in that nine out of 10 children who attend have referred themselves, or were brought in by their peers. Success rates for reintegration into education as well as behaviour modification – including among teen gang members – are high and being studied all over the world.
Australian authorities are paying attention, particularly to the pioneering work done in violence prevention. The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has expressed interest. A spokesman for the Prime Minister's office confirmed the Government had made tentative steps to explore the KidsCo model: "The combination of having a strong academic input from specialists in neuroscience with the gritty reality of working with deeply traumatised kids is striking," he said. "We are looking at how KidsCo tackles youth violence and how the model might apply elsewhere, but it is still early days."
Dr Batmanghelidjh is a dynamo who singlehandedly raises more than 5 million a year from Britain's establishment – the British Government recently committed 4.5 million a year. She also deals with many children herself, choosing the most difficult cases for advocacy and personal therapy. Upbeat and energetic, she works in an office as colourful as her clothing but exudes a maternal calm that palpably soothes her young charges.
The child of a wealthy family, she was educated at boarding school in Britain and clearly remembers deciding her vocation as a very young child: "I was teased they used to say to me 'shut up and go and run your orphanage'," she laughed. "I had this early sense of people; I could swim into them and understand what was going on. But I also had a sense of industry, as a child I built things, cut sheets up to make things, was always working at something."
She is passionate not only about her children but her staff, nurturing the workers, watching that they are not allowed to burn out and unabashed about using the "l" word, love, at work – an entirely different approach, she says, to other welfare sectors.
Workers who are unable to empathise any more because they are so overworked or desensitised to their clients' pain lose their humanity, and retaining this, she says, is key to her model's success. "There is no point in punishing children who lash out because they were neglected or abused. The more profound wrongs have not been wreaked by children on society but by institutions upon children when biological care failed."
Paola Totaro
5 May 2009
