Kids Company helped scores of immigrants stay in UK on benefits and arranged private sex-change against NHS doctors advice

  • Kids Company spent public money helping immigrants and on surgery
  • A 207-page report from 2013 states that between March 2011 - March 2013 charity helped 123 people with 'immigration issues' by paying legal bills
  • Sources also say gender reassignment surgery, funded by one of the charity’s private donors, was organised after NHS refused to carry it out
  • It also doled out £60,000 to Oxford University graduate over past 2 years
  • Follows revelations founder Camila Batmanghelidjh had a 'personal private swimming pool' in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from charity's funds  

Questions:  Camila Batmanghelidjh, whose charity Kids Company, helped scores of immigrants stay in the UK on benefits

Questions:  Camila Batmanghelidjh, whose charity Kids Company, helped scores of immigrants stay in the UK on benefits

Kids Company spent tens of thousands of pounds of public money helping immigrants to remain in the country and claim benefits.

The scandal-hit charity also arranged for one of its clients to have private sex-change surgery, and has doled out more than £60,000 in ‘support’ to an Oxford University graduate over the past two years.

Our latest disclosures come as the Charity Commission announced an investigation into how Camila Batmanghelidjh’s organisation spent millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.

The move follows weeks of revelations in this newspaper, including how Ms Batmanghelidjh had a ‘personal private swimming pool’ in a £5,000-a-month mansion paid for from the charity’s funds.

Details of its role in helping immigrants are contained in a private report, which the charity wrote to justify its activities to Ministers after receiving a £9.58million Government grant.

The 207-page report, written in 2013, states that between March 2011 and March 2013 the charity helped 125 people with ‘immigration issues’ by paying legal bills and providing advice from the charity’s lawyers. It stated: ‘Of these, 45 have successfully achieved a legal and satisfactory status with the help of Kids Company, while 80 are working on this with our immigration specialist services.’

The report explains Kids Company helped them because ‘young people over 18 without appropriate legal status are not only ineligible to apply for Jobseeker’s Allowance or housing benefit, but are also unable to work legally’. 

It adds: ‘Our legal department tried to find the best route to secure an individual’s status. This can mean submitting applications to the Home Office (some of which cost as much as £800 per person), which we pay on behalf of the family.

‘Once an application has been submitted and accepted, then the individual, if they have young children, is eligible for local authority support.’

Over the same period, the charity said it had also purchased 184 passports for clients, and given ‘ongoing help’ to a further 100 people to obtain one, ‘in order to help improve access to employment’. It is not clear whether the action was related to an immigration issue.

In 2013, a standard UK passport cost £72.50. If all 284 were given a British passport, the exercise would have cost more than £20,000.

The charity, established in 1996, received at least £40million from the Government before closing this month with the loss of 600 jobs following allegations about extravagant spending and nepotism.

Separately, this newspaper has also established that Kids Company arranged for one of its clients to have gender reassignment surgery this year at a private clinic. Sources expressed concern the operation – funded by one of the charity’s private donors – was organised after the NHS refused to carry it out. One source said: ‘NHS doctors weren’t prepared to do the operation ... on the grounds the person wasn’t mentally ready. Was it the place of the charity to arrange something the NHS wasn’t prepared to fund?’

Three major inquiries are investigating the collapsed charity, which closed recently after getting through more than £30 million in public funds (pictured are staff members)

Staff members from the Kids Company charity sit on a wall with children during a rally near Downing Street

The Mail on Sunday has also studied a list of the charity’s 25 clients who benefited from its highest expenditure between January and December 2014 – a total of £769,150 between them. They include an Oxford University graduate, 26, who received £19,111 in 2013 and £41,556 last year.

However, she was employed by Kids Company at the same time, raising questions about why she was registered as a client.

Last night Ms Batmanghelidjh did not respond to a request for comment.

 

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