Supplementary written evidence from A1 (KCI 08)
Supplementary evidence to the PACA Select Committee post the oral evidence session of 15.10.15:
I write to submit this supplementary evidence to the Committee following witnessing last week's oral evidence and it becoming evident that further information held by myself may serve to clarify several of the key points explored that day.
1. Transfer of clients post-closure to the Local Authority
Following closure of the charity on 5th August, I was contacted on 6th August by Kids Company's Clinical Director to request I attend a meeting with the Local Authorities that afternoon and, subsequently, to take the lead on the transfer of cases to the Local Authorities. Prior to this my role was Lead Safeguarding Manager at the charity's largest centre - the Arches II in Lambeth.
On the afternoon of 6th August I attended a meeting which included Mr Quirke-Thornton from Southwark, senior representatives from Lambeth, Camden, the Maudsley hospital and Department of Education. Kids Company were represented by myself, our Clinical Director, the Director of Strategy, the Clinical Operations Manager and the Quality Assurance Manager. It was at this meeting that the framework and timescale for the transfer of relevant cases was agreed.
It was apparent at the outset of the meeting that previous discussions had taken place between both parties regarding whether the transfer process should include complete transfer of every case file or not, although I had not been party to any of those discussions. Mr Quirke-Thornton's stated position at the outset of the 6th August meeting however was not that full file disclosure was being requested. Rather that key information (Mr Quirke-Thornton read out a list which included name, address, GP details etc) for young people who would be left in need or at risk by Kids Company's closure be provided. Kids Company's position was that it would be a breach of the Data Protection Act to handover any records where there was not a risk of significant harm to the young person, unless the clients consented to the information being disclosed. Further that under our responsibilities within s47 of the Children Act, we would already have notified the Local Authority had we felt a young person with whom we were working was at risk of significant harm. I understood that both sides had taken legal advice prior to the meeting of the 6th re/this issue and both felt their positions to have been confirmed by the legal advice given. As such, the focus of the meeting on the 6th was to determine a workable way forward that would be most in the interests of vulnerable, yet also often wary and marginalised, children. Following discussion of the important issue of consent, the Data Protection Act requirements, and the pragmatic issue of whether the Local Authority could realistically quickly sort through some 16,000 electronic files to determine which were most at risk, a framework for the handover was agreed. The consensus was that not every case file would be transferred, but equally that those transferred should not only include those at risk of significant harm under s47, but also families where Kids Company's closure would leave children in need under s17 of the Children Act. However this still meant Kids Company would not transfer large numbers of other families who would be negatively impacted by our closure, but who did not have children or vulnerable young adults reaching the threshold of need under s17. It was further agreed that we could not transfer the whole file due to data protection and consent issues, but that only the key details listed by Mr Quirke-Thornton would be passed across via referral sheets.
In terms of Peter John's public comments that Southwark repeatedly requested the full transfer of all files, I can only assume he refers to discussions prior to the joint agreement reached re/process on 6th August as his comments are not in sync with the process agreed to by his Director of Children & Adults Services during the meeting on the 6th.
Between 6th and 19th August, I met with Mr Quirke-Thornton approximately six times at Kids Company's temporary CitiPoint office as we worked closely together to ensure a smooth handover.
Kids Company's final count of referral forms submitted was 1717. This differs slightly from the publicly reported figure of 1,692 although the difference is not statistically relevant. However a key issue is that the majority of these referral forms related to families rather than to single children. As such our estimate of children/vulnerable young adults referred via this process has always been 3000-4000 individuals. Please see Appendix A [Link] to my initial submission which evidences this was the given figure from 20th August.
There were several crucial issues which contributed to this number being lower than expected. Each of these issues was discussed in depth and repeatedly throughout the sequence of meetings of 6-19th August with Mr Quirke-Thornton and I would therefore be surprised if this important context did not appear within his pending report.
i. (Very approximately) half of the children and vulnerable adults within both our "actively supported" and "reached" totals, came via our Schools Programme. As closure occurred during the summer holidays, Kids Company had no access to the records of these families at point of closure. Historically schools had not allowed Kids Company to install its Aurora electronic filing system on school computers and as such Aurora did not hold details for the majority of schools based clients. (Small numbers who subsequently accessed other services within Kids Company were able to be added to Aurora via those services.) As such KidsCompany had no way to refer some circa half of its client base post closure. This obviously gave us great concern and was raised with Mr Quirke-Thornton and his team at every one of the meetings during this period. The final decision was that Kids Company provided the list of schools operated within to Mr Quirke-Thornton and his colleagues and they undertook to contact the relevant Local Authorities and schools within the new school term and identify pupils who may be in need of support.
ii. The figure of 3-4000 children/vulnerable adults relates to London only and does not include Bristol nor Liverpool. Liverpool was a small scale, low risk project working with only a small client base with only six requiring flagging with the Local Authority post closure. Bristol's referral process was managed separately by their management team in liaison with local services in Bristol and I do not have the figures there.
iii. The referral process was completed by staff who had just lost their jobs and who were giving up their time voluntarily to ensure children received the support they needed. Whilst they would have been staff previously employed in safeguarding or experienced keywork roles within the charity and had the skills to complete the work, the realities of the situation meant the level of detail given on these referral forms was far less than we would ordinarily hope to provide. This may go some way to explain why Social Care subsequently felt cases to be lower risk than Kids Company. Additionally it is a matter of public record that Local Authority's interpretations of the "in need" and "at risk" thresholds have received repeated and substantial criticism from across the charity and academic sectors and from related professional disciplines and this should also be considered when determining the relative interpretations of risk.
iv. In several sections of the media there have been reports that of the referral forms submitted, Kids Company themselves designated only a few hundred as "high risk". As the responsible manager for this process I can confirm to the Committee that no categorisation of referrals as low/medium/high risk took place at point of referral by Kids Company. All referrals sent were sent because we deemed the families referred would be left either at risk or in need under the Children Act thresholds without Kids Company support. I am consequently both confused and concerned at these media reports as they are clearly inaccurate and misleading. The only source I can conceive of for these figures would be that a proportion of the referral forms were printed directly from the electronic Aurora database for review. These may have contained an internal risk measurement of "high", "medium" or "low" but as detailed within my main submission of evidence these categories relate only to relative internal client population. Ie/a "low" risk designation on that database is only low risk in relation to our high risk clients who would be in imminent danger.
Large numbers of Kids Company's "low risk" client designation would still meet Local Authority thresholds for Child in Need and would be considered as higher risk by the majority of other agencies with none of us wishing the conditions of life this group faced upon our own children. Please refer to my main submission for an outline of issues that would have been only "low risk" within Kids Company's internal risk matrix, yet clearly could and should be termed higher risk when considered against incidence within the wider population. Additionally if this is the source of these statistics, only a proportion of the referral forms would have contained any risk designation at all as there were several different formats used and as such again these figures are unreliable and misrepresentative. I could easily have clarified these points at any point if asked. However instead of seeking clarification from ourselves, misleading and inaccurate information appears to have been released into the public domain.
2. Shredding
This question has arisen several times since closure.
I can confirm that at the Arches II no client files nor any original paperwork was shredded. Indeed this would have been impossible as client files have never been stored at Centres during my time at Kids Company. Paper files for Centre based clients were stored at Kids Company's Parkhouse address and not held at client facing centres for security reasons. Paper files for schools based clients were kept in the schools. Since the launch of the Aurora electronic filing system in 2012 the majority of records are however not kept on paper file and instead documents were scanned and uploaded onto clients' electronic files. Staff had access to this system from the Centres but it is not possible to delete records or files on the Aurora system.
However we certainly did shred copies of any paperwork that had already been uploaded to Aurora, staff personal notes and other non-original but client identifying data. This was a decision I took for this Centre within my role on the senior management team and in my view was required to ensure we were compliant with our duties under the Data Protection Act. In other words to ensure that once we left the building and the bailiffs entered, they would not have access to confidential information, telephone numbers or over details about vulnerable people. I would imagine GP surgeries and other settings would take equal precautions to ensure patient details were not left for bailiffs to find once the surgery's lease had expired. However any paperwork destroyed in this way was either a working copy or duplicate of information already uploaded onto Aurora or stored at Parkhouse.
Policy required that very little original client data was stored at Centre level. All that would have been on site in terms of original data would have been that week's new assessments (these went to Parkhouse in weekly batches so the last few days' would have been present at Centre) and attendance registers for any recent day trips or onsite activities. On the day of closure the recent new assessments were taken to Citipoint by myself to join the other referral forms to be passed to Social Care. The attendance registers were passed to the Clinical Director to be transported to Parkhouse to join the other files and client original data there. I understand that all of the family files and other data from Parkhouse, along with the Aurora database content, is now in secure storage although I did not manage that process. Both the Official Receiver and Southwark Children's Services (via Mr Quirke-Thornton) have the storage details.
Although one member of staff has been quoted as speaking to the Times on this issue, any of the Centre's other staff who were in work on 5th August would be able to confirm the above. The procedures re/ not holding the original assessments on site longer than a week, working from copies on site, with the originals transported weekly to Parkhouse and subsequently being used as the basis from which to create new clients' Aurora files, can all be confirmed by either of the Centre's Assessment/First Response Co-team leaders, names available on request.
3. Serious incidents affecting former clients post closure
[Details provided to committee, but removed pre-publication to protect confidentiality of a young person]
Although I do not know the identities of the young men who were stabbed so cannot comment specifically on their cases, I can confirm on behalf of senior management at the Centre, that the most they could have regularly received, if they indeed were on our allowance list at all, would have been £10 per child per week. Further this would have been paid in supermarket food vouchers, not cash, specifically to attempt to ensure essential allowances were spent as intended. This policy was strictly adhered to at the Arches II with allowances also being reviewed 3-6 monthly to ensure they were still required and that clients were engaging in other services. In occasional cases, bus passes were paid for some clients who could prove this was essential for educational or therapy attendance and whose budgeting assessments evidenced they would not otherwise be able to attend. However it is unlikely this applied to these young men if they were under 18 as they would have had access to free travel via the college stamped Oyster card if in education. If they had have been provided budget forms, management approval and receipts would have been required.
The Centre had a small emergency duty cash float for client emergencies but again any money spent from this would be receipted and was audited weekly. Additionally regular support was not provided via this route as it was intended only for one-off emergencies.
I accept that the press have been keen to report stories of clients receiving large sums regularly in envelopes. I cannot speak to practice prior to late 2010 when I joined the Centre, nor practice at other Centres, but at Arches II the stories in the press simply bear no relation to the rigour and scrutiny to which client allowances and budgeting were subjected. Very many families presented at this Centre with no income to buy food or other essential items and it was only in these situations, and following an in-depth initial assessment and a budgeting assessment that any financial support could be provided. Whilst one cannot guarantee in any system that there were not isolated exceptions or individuals who managed to subvert the system, no system should be judged on its exceptions alone. Rather the system should be judged on the experiences of the overwhelming majority and the rigour with which decisions were made.
Finally, in terms of the assertion that a single source could credibly attest that a murder, three stabbings and four separate suicide attempts amongst young people many of whom did not know each other and who resided in different areas of London, were all attributable to sudden lack of money to pay drug debts, in my experience bears considerable further scrutiny. In particular I do not know of any expert Social Work, Psychologist or Criminologist who would consider such a simple explanation for such complex problems at all likely. Further given the young people concerned resided in different Local Authorities, there is no single Children's Safeguarding Board or Local Authority that could credibly speak to all eight cases. Taking all this together, I would assert that the the comment from the Chair regarding drug debts being a likely explanation for these disparate incidents seems, at the very least, exceptionally contentious and overly simplistic. As such it requires re-examination and clarification, including an apology to the eight families concerned if this re-examination does conclude that debts to drug pushers is not an adequate or comprehensive explanation for the complexity of the situations each of these individuals faced.
October 2015