I never knew what to expect when I rang the bell beside the sturdy double doors on Decima Street. This was Kids Company, 2004. Young teenagers, long excluded from school, happily making each other sandwiches in the canteen or hot chocolate with luxurious spoonfuls of sugar stirred in. An older lad, high and enraged, ramming the bolted door after the security guard had barred him for threatening behaviour. The founder of the charity, Camila Batmanghelidjh, venting her frustration at the pace of state bureaucracy as she tried to find a bed for that night for a girl who had run away from her abusive stepfather.
I visited regularly over the years, first as a journalist researching my book about modern childhood and later as a volunteer. Back then, despite the chaos and the flares of violence, there was a heady sense that behind those double doors something magical was happening – and that mustn’t be forgotten in the controversies that surrounded the charity’s collapse a decade later.
