The Morgan Stanley Heart Yard: Therapy House, Funding and Fate

The Morgan Stanley Heart Yard was Kids Company’s purpose-designed therapy house in Loughborough Junction, south London. Morgan Stanley employees and the firm funded the purchase, renovation and early running costs; Joanna Lumley opened it on 30 April 2013; and the centre began operating in May.

This reconstruction brings together the former Kids Company page, Morgan Stanley’s announcements and sustainability reports, an NHS pathway review and the 2021 High Court judgment. It separates the centre’s stated therapeutic ambitions from independently documented facts, and follows the property beyond the charity’s closure in August 2015.

Heart Yard at a glance

How the Heart Yard was funded and opened

Morgan Stanley selected Kids Company as its London charity partner in 2011. The practical aim was unusually concrete: acquire a permanent building in which children with high levels of need could receive specialist support away from the pressure and noise of a general drop-in centre. A Morgan Stanley sustainability report from that period anticipated a garden, kitchen and nursery as well as psychiatric, therapeutic and related care.

July 2012: property purchased, £1.3 million raised to date

On 2 July 2012 Morgan Stanley announced that the purchase had completed. Its employees had raised £650,000, the Morgan Stanley International Foundation had matched those contributions, and the combined amount was £1.3 million “to date”. The building still needed renovation and fitting out, and the announcement expected an autumn 2012 opening.

That timetable slipped. The delay matters because it explains both the later opening and the larger number reported the following spring. The July announcement recorded a campaign in progress, not a final account.

April–May 2013: more than £1.6 million and an operating centre

By 29 April 2013 Morgan Stanley said employees and the firm had raised more than £1.6 million. The later total covered acquisition and renovation and was also intended to help with operating costs. Joanna Lumley, a long-time Kids Company supporter, opened the house with founder and chief executive Camila Batmanghelidjh on 30 April, and services were due to start in May.

The distinction is straightforward: £1.3 million was the matched sum reported in July 2012; more than £1.6 million was the cumulative sum reported nine months later after additional fundraising and work on the building. Describing either one as the sole definitive “price of the Heart Yard” would be misleading because the later package included more than the purchase itself.

2014: a year of activity, reported by the funder

Morgan Stanley’s 2014 Sustainability Report said the Heart Yard provided a space for more than 850 children, young people and their families that year. It listed one-to-one therapy, group therapy, therapeutic play, activities and other support. That wording is important: it describes a mixed group receiving a range of interventions. It does not establish that 850 individual children each completed a defined course of psychotherapy, nor is the sustainability report an independent clinical evaluation.

What was inside the therapy house?

The recovered Kids Company page presented the building as a “therapeutic sanctuary”. Its layout tried to solve a specific problem: a child living with chronic instability might need formal therapy, but the ability to feel safe enough to talk could depend on food, calm, play and a dependable relationship. The house therefore joined clinical rooms to recognisably domestic and creative spaces.

This configuration was not accidental decoration. Kids Company described its street-level services as “wraparound” care: therapy sat alongside help with food, housing, education and practical crises. The Heart Yard concentrated the therapeutic part of that model in a building intended to feel less institutional. For a wider view of how the organisation operated outside London, see the sourced history of Kids Company Bristol.

What support did it provide—and what outcomes were claimed?

The 2013 Morgan Stanley opening announcement named psychiatric support, child and adolescent therapy, counselling and complementary treatments. Kids Company’s own page added therapeutic play, cooking and eating together, yoga and the girls’ group. In March 2015 an NHS England London pathway review independently identified the Heart Yard, Arches II and another Kids Company site as south London locations providing mental-health, art and emotional-wellbeing support alongside practical help.

The former page set out ambitious intended outcomes. It said the programme sought to reduce emotional distress and the power of traumatic memories; lessen self-harm, violence and agitation; improve calm, resilience, sleep, diet and physical health; strengthen the ability to learn; and reduce reliance on drugs and alcohol. Those statements show what Kids Company designed the service to achieve. They should not be read as measured results for every attendee: the recovered page did not publish a comparison group, outcome instrument, follow-up period or independently audited success rate.

What “more than 850” does—and does not—tell us

The strongest surviving annual activity figure is Morgan Stanley’s statement that more than 850 children, young people and family members received support in the space during 2014. It is a useful indicator that the centre was operating at meaningful scale. But the population includes family members, and the support categories range from one-to-one therapy to activities and “other support”. A careful summary is therefore:

• more than 850 people in the combined children, young people and family-member population were reported as receiving some form of support at the Heart Yard in 2014;
• the support included individual and group therapy, therapeutic play and other activity;
• the source does not provide a unique child-only caseload or completion rate; and
• the source is the funder’s sustainability report, not an independent service evaluation.

This precision matters because Kids Company’s much larger organisation-wide claim of 36,000 beneficiaries also mixed direct and indirect support. The reconstructed June and November 2013 newsletters explains how that figure was used and what the regulator later established.

What made the model different from a conventional clinic?

The Heart Yard’s most distinctive choice was to design around the conditions needed for engagement, not only around a timetable of appointments. A conventional clinic can offer excellent treatment, but it usually assumes that the patient arrives fed, can wait, trusts the room and has enough stability to return. Kids Company’s account started further back: some young people might be hungry, agitated, frightened of authority, moving between addresses or carrying experiences that made an overtly clinical setting difficult.

The house tried to create several routes into the same relationship. A young child could begin through play; an older child might draw, study, cook or spend time in the garden before speaking directly; a parent or carer could be involved around a shared kitchen rather than encountered only at the end of an appointment. This does not make every activity “therapy”. It means the environment and ordinary activity were used to support attendance, trust and regulation around formal clinical work.

There were also limits. A warm, domestic setting cannot replace statutory safeguarding, specialist diagnosis, emergency care or a properly commissioned clinical pathway. Nor does a long menu of activities prove that each was delivered at the same intensity. The independent NHS review is useful precisely because it places the Heart Yard within a wider network: Kids Company offered mental-health, art and emotional-wellbeing support, while specialist health, police and local-authority services retained responsibilities that a charity could not absorb.

For present-day readers, the lasting design lesson is practical. A child’s ability to use therapy can be affected by hunger, noise, transport, fear, relationships and whether the setting feels comprehensible. Services do not have to imitate the Heart Yard to take those barriers seriously. The historical claim worth preserving is not that one colourful house solved trauma, but that clinical help was deliberately connected to the everyday conditions that make help possible.

How strong is the evidence?

What happened to the Heart Yard after Kids Company closed?

Kids Company stopped operating on 5 August 2015 and entered insolvent liquidation. The Heart Yard was one of the few substantial assets associated with an organisation otherwise dependent on continuing grants and donations.

Paragraph 537 of the 2021 High Court judgment explains the property arrangement. Morgan Stanley’s gift initially carried restrictions, but after seven years—2019—Kids Company would have been free to sell or mortgage the property without the bank’s consent. The judge accepted evidence that the building had been understood as a potential reserve asset in a crisis. In practice Morgan Stanley consented to a sale following liquidation, and the proceeds were used towards creditors.

That outcome complicates two easy stories. The Heart Yard was not merely a rented room that vanished on closure: the fundraising had created a real property asset. But nor did it remain a permanent Kids Company service. The therapy house closed with the charity, its programmes ended and the building was sold through the liquidation process.

The wider governance and legal history is covered in Kids Company’s team and trustees. The present KidsCo is an independent parenting publication, not a continuation of the former charity and not a route into its closed services.

Common questions

What was the Morgan Stanley Heart Yard?

It was a Kids Company therapy house in Loughborough Junction, south London. It combined private treatment rooms with art, play, cooking, study and garden spaces for children, young people and families affected by trauma and severe adversity.

How much did Morgan Stanley raise for the Heart Yard?

Morgan Stanley reported £1.3 million raised to date in July 2012—£650,000 from employees and a matching foundation contribution. By April 2013 it reported more than £1.6 million after further fundraising for acquisition, renovation and operating costs.

When did the Heart Yard open?

Joanna Lumley and Camila Batmanghelidjh officially opened it on 30 April 2013. Morgan Stanley’s announcement said the centre would begin operating in May 2013.

What therapies were offered at the Heart Yard?

Contemporary records name psychiatric support, child and adolescent therapy, counselling, complementary treatments, one-to-one and group therapy, therapeutic play, art, yoga and relational activities such as cooking and eating together.

How many children used the Heart Yard?

Morgan Stanley reported that the space supported more than 850 children, young people and family members during 2014. The published figure combines those groups and several types of support, so it is not a child-only psychotherapy caseload.

Was the Heart Yard independently evaluated?

An NHS England London review independently confirmed that the site formed part of Kids Company’s mental-health and wellbeing provision. The detailed outcomes on the old Kids Company page were organisational aims; the page did not publish a controlled or independently audited outcome study.

What happened to the Heart Yard building?

It closed as a Kids Company service in 2015. The 2021 High Court judgment records that Morgan Stanley later consented to its sale after liquidation and that the proceeds were applied towards creditors.

Can I contact the Heart Yard now?

No. The service and its former contact routes are closed. For urgent mental-health support in England, call 111 and select the mental health option; call 999 or attend A&E if there is an immediate threat to life.

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