The Kids Company archive brings together sourced records for pages and publications that once appeared on kidsco.org.uk when the domain belonged to the former children’s charity. Fifteen in-depth records now cover founder Camila Batmanghelidjh, the Morgan Stanley Heart Yard, the complete 2012–2015 newsletter sequence, the team and trustees, Print Happiness, the six-centre Bristol operation and the Winter 2009 newsletter.
Kids Company is not operating: the charity ceased work on 5 August 2015. Today’s KidsCo is an independent pregnancy, baby and parenting publication; it does not provide the former services, hold its client records or accept a donation on its behalf. Old donation, referral, email, telephone and text instructions must not be used.
Explore the archive records
Each record reconstructs what the destination was for and distinguishes a former-site claim from evidence in a judgment, regulator report, institutional history or contemporaneous account. Sensitive documents are described rather than republished where identification and context can be preserved without exposing former service users.
Biography and legal record
Camila Batmanghelidjh
A sourced biography from her early therapeutic work and the 1996 founding of Kids Company to her death in 2024. It separates the 2021 disqualification case, 2022 Charity Commission report and partially successful 2025 judicial review, and qualifies the former page’s Place2Be claim against Place2Be’s current history.
Campaign reconstruction
Print Happiness
The complete record of AMV BBDO’s six-day December 2013 campaign. Six Ultimaker printers in a Soho shop turned £5 text donations into toys designed by Aardman, TADO and Triclops Studio. The obsolete donation instruction is not republished as active.
Local service history
Kids Company Bristol
A centre-by-centre reconstruction of Lighthouse, Treetops, Heart Lodge, Bristol Urban Academy, Le Coeur and The Island, followed by what transferred or closed in 2015 and the current official Bristol routes for family help and safeguarding concerns.
Document record
Winter 2009 newsletter, Issue 10
A bibliographic record and detailed contents summary for the 23-page Christmas-period newsletter. The original PDF is not publicly republished because it contains identifiable young people, photographs and sensitive case or safeguarding narratives.
Therapy-centre history
Morgan Stanley Heart Yard
How a £1.6m-plus partnership created a purpose-designed therapy house in south London: its rooms, support model, reported reach, limits of the evidence and what happened to the property after 2015.
Newsletter reconstruction
Kids Company’s 2012 Newsletters
The November and December Christmas record: planned support for 3,000 and 7,500 people, six different retail-giving mechanics, a 24-hour safeguarding line and the later £630,000-plus Coldplay result.
Complete annual record
Kids Company’s 2013 Newsletters
All twelve recovered publications from February to December, with every event and appeal findable by date, contribution terms decoded, conflicting dates corrected and the disputed 36,000 figure fully explained.
Campaign and outcome record
Kids Company’s 2014 Newsletters
Five recovered pages followed beyond their announcements: Damien Hirst’s Mickey sold for £902,500, while the proposed See the Child task force attracted 28,000-plus signatures but never became operational.
Final-year record
Kids Company’s 2015 Newsletters
The February and March issues reconstructed claim by claim, including food work, storage, corporate fundraising and Year of the Bus—plus an honest record of the missing April issue and what followed.
People and governance
Kids Company’s Team and Trustees
Who actually ran the charity: founder and chief executive, workforce, volunteers, closure-date trustees, board committees and the distinct conclusions reached by the court and regulator.
Campaign and event history
Kids Company Campaigns and Events: 2008–2013
Seven lost campaign pages reconstructed, from Christmas 2008 and Gladrags to Conspiracy for Good, the Royal Academy and Under 1 Roof—with promises kept separate from provable results.
Services and centres
Kids Company Services and Centres
A mapped record of centres, schools, therapy, complementary health, training and corporate volunteering, including the limits of the available evaluation evidence.
Youth enterprise pilot
Kids Company Youth Social Enterprises
All In All Transit, NewBiggz and F.A-B Arts reconstructed from £10,000 grants through early customers, social aims, trading evidence and company records.
Public-funding record
Kids Company Government Funding
The £46m public-funding history, 2013–15 grant, monitoring, final £3m direction and the distinct findings of Parliament, the court and the regulator.
2015 appeal and help today
Kids Company Safe Summer Appeal
The “Summer Is No Holiday” campaign reconstructed, followed by a current UK route map for holiday food, activities, crisis help and safeguarding.
Kids Company: the essential timeline
| Date | Event | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1996 | Camila Batmanghelidjh founded Kids Company in south London. | The charity developed from open-access work into centres, schools programmes and regional services. |
| 1997–1998 | Keeping Kids Company was incorporated and registered as a charity. | The legal entity was charity 1068298 and company 03442083. |
| 2003–2013 | Most of the closure-date trustee board was appointed; Andrew Webster, the final member to join, was appointed in December 2013. | The team and trustees record distinguishes executive leadership, unpaid governance, paid delivery and volunteering. |
| 2009 | Issue 10 of the Kids Company newsletter documented projects, safeguarding work, events and Christmas activity. | The archive preserves its identity without republishing sensitive case material. |
| 2008–2010 | Christmas support, Gladrags, Bare Thread and Conspiracy for Good connected fundraising, public events and direct-service appeals. | The campaign record separates advertised targets and ticket limits from independently evidenced outcomes. |
| 2011–2012 | Morgan Stanley partnered with Kids Company, funding the purchase and renovation of the Heart Yard. | The partnership reported £1.3 million raised by July 2012; the total exceeded £1.6 million by the opening. |
| November–December 2012 | Two Christmas newsletters combined direct support, safeguarding cover, events and multiple retail-giving models. | The archive keeps the 3,000-person party plan separate from the 7,500-person Christmas-period figure and traces Coldplay’s exhibition to a later £630,000-plus result. |
| 30 April 2013 | The Morgan Stanley Heart Yard opened as a purpose-designed therapy house. | Its rooms joined clinical support with play, art, food and garden spaces. |
| 2013 | Three youth-led social enterprises received £10,000 seed grants and began trading; public events included the Royal Academy exhibition and Under 1 Roof. | The archive follows company filings and documented early customers rather than assuming the pilots became sustainable businesses. |
| February–December 2013 | Twelve recovered publications followed therapy, art, research, volunteering, challenge events, retail partnerships, social enterprise and Christmas support. | The complete record corrects conflicting dates and counts, separates pledges from results and explains how the “over 36,000” figure included indirect beneficiaries. |
| December 2013 | Print Happiness ran for six days in Soho. | The campaign connected mobile giving, a live stream and physical 3D-print production. |
| 2013–2015 | The Bristol operation grew to six named centres and work in six schools. | It included different education, drop-in and therapeutic services rather than one generic centre. |
| January–November 2014 | Five recovered pages combined arts fundraising, summer and Christmas support, challenge events and the See the Child policy campaign. | The Hirst Mickey sale achieved £902,500; the proposed children’s task force, despite more than 28,000 petition signatures, never became operational. |
| 2000–2015 | Central government provided approximately £46 million across successive grants; the final £3 million direction was approved on 30 July 2015. | The funding record distinguishes grants, conditions, monitoring and later official conclusions. |
| June–August 2015 | “Summer Is No Holiday” asked for food, activities and safe support during the long school break. | The reconstructed appeal now points readers to current local-authority, safeguarding and crisis routes rather than obsolete donation instructions. |
| February–March 2015 | The final surviving newsletters promoted food work, key-worker support, corporate days, storage, retail fundraising and the Year of the Bus auction. | The April URL survives without a recoverable body; the record does not invent its contents and follows the chronology through closure. |
| 5 August 2015 | Kids Company ceased operating. | Former service and donation routes ended; regional transitions were not uniform. |
| 2021 | The High Court dismissed the Official Receiver’s director-disqualification claim. | No former trustee was disqualified, and Batmanghelidjh was not a de facto director. |
| 2022 | The Charity Commission published its statutory inquiry report. | This was a different process answering different legal and regulatory questions. |
| 2024 | Batmanghelidjh died; the High Court later allowed Michael-Karim Kerman to continue her judicial-review claim. | The final challenge did not end with her death. |
| May 2025 | The High Court upheld two aspects of the challenge and dismissed the remainder. | Four report passages were changed or removed; the financial-mismanagement finding remained. |
The court and regulator record in one minute
The 2021 High Court case and the Charity Commission inquiry are often confused. In 2021 the Official Receiver asked the court to disqualify seven former trustees under company-director law and argued that Kids Company had been operated on an unsustainable model. After a 37-day trial, the court refused the applications and held that the single pleaded allegation was not made out. It also decided Batmanghelidjh was not a de facto director.
The Charity Commission published a separate statutory inquiry report in 2022. Its current amended version records repeated late payment to HMRC, workers and other creditors as financial mismanagement, while also stating that there was no dishonesty, bad faith or inappropriate personal gain in the operation of the charity.
A judicial review of that report reached final judgment in May 2025. The claimant succeeded over the report’s treatment of spending on the “top 25” beneficiaries and the rationality of its reserves criticism. The broader challenge was dismissed; the court upheld the surviving financial-mismanagement conclusion and rejected alleged predetermination. The Commission amended paragraphs 43, 45 and 51 and removed paragraph 73.
The accurate summary is therefore neither “every allegation was proved” nor “the charity was completely cleared”. The Camila Batmanghelidjh record sets out the proceedings side by side with links to the judgments.
Official regulator record
Amended Charity Commission inquiry
The current report, first published in February 2022 and amended after the May 2025 judgment. Use this version rather than a downloaded pre-amendment copy.
Court judgment
Official Receiver case, 2021
The Courts and Tribunals Judiciary page for the disqualification judgment, including the decision concerning Batmanghelidjh’s legal status.
Court judgment
Kerman v Charity Commission, 2025
The final judicial-review judgment explaining which challenges succeeded, which failed and why the Commission report required targeted amendments.
Parliamentary record
UK Parliament closure inquiry
Public Accounts Committee reports, oral evidence and written evidence concerning public funding, due diligence and the 2015 closure.
How this archive is built
A useful archive page does more than announce that a link used to exist. Each record begins with the last reliable capture or recovered file, then checks its claims against the best source available for that type of fact.
- Identity: former title, URL, date, format and creator are recovered before interpretation.
- Provenance: a former Kids Company page is treated as the organisation’s own account, not as independent proof.
- Source hierarchy: judgments establish what a court decided; the current amended inquiry establishes the regulator’s position; parliamentary evidence records what witnesses said; contemporaneous reporting helps reconstruct time and place.
- Contradictions: differences are explained. The old Camila profile’s Place2Be claim, for example, is not repeated without Place2Be’s current founder record.
- Present status: closed appeals and contacts are labelled closed. Current help is linked only where an authoritative modern route can be identified.
- Privacy: a citation can be preserved without republishing a child’s photograph, health detail or case history.
Why some old files are not republished
Historical availability is not the same as a good reason to expose material again. The recovered Winter 2009 PDF combines ordinary organisational news with photographs and detailed narratives about identifiable children and young people, including family, care, health and safeguarding circumstances. A modern searchable copy would place those accounts before a new audience for a different purpose.
The archive therefore keeps the document’s title, issue, date, page count, file properties, contents and checksum while withholding the PDF. That is enough to identify the object and support careful research. It is not necessary to reproduce every child’s story to repair the public record around the citation.
Why old donation and referral details disappear
A historical phone number, email inbox, address, SMS keyword or bank route can be reassigned or remain online after the organisation behind it has gone. Reprinting it beside an emotional appeal creates a real risk of misdirected contact or money. Campaign records explain how the mechanism worked without inviting its reuse.
Visitors who came to the former donation page can instead use KidsCo’s current, independent guide to the best children’s charities to donate to and how to check them. It includes live UK register routes, Gift Aid, impact evidence, reserves and donation-security checks.
Using the archive in research
An archive record is a finding aid and synthesis, not a facsimile. Cite the historical organisation as creator of its page or document, record the date of the capture you actually consulted and distinguish that claim from a later court or regulator conclusion. If a paragraph depends on a judgment, cite the judgment rather than a news summary or this hub.
For the Winter 2009 newsletter, a practical catalogue citation is: Kids Company Newsletter, Issue 10, Winter 2009, PDF created 20 November 2009; present-day descriptive record reviewed by KidsCo on 11 August 2026. Researchers relying on a particular original passage should cite the copy they lawfully consulted and follow applicable safeguarding, copyright, research-ethics and data-protection duties.
If you hold a contemporaneous page or publication missing from this archive, you can contact KidsCo with the exact former URL, date and provenance. Do not send unredacted case files or sensitive personal information through the general contact form.
Editorial status
Archive reviewed: 12 August 2026 by the KidsCo Editorial Team. The final 2025 High Court judgment and the amended Charity Commission report are included. Current Bristol support routes were checked against Bristol City Council. The archive is separate from KidsCo’s parenting editorial standards but follows the same source, correction and external-link rules.
Read about the present KidsCo or browse our current family-life guides.