Camila Batmanghelidjh

Camila Batmanghelidjh has spent over three decades working with vulnerable children and families. Having qualified as a psychotherapist in her early 20s, she has combined a wide range of therapeutic practices with practical interventions in depleted, urban neighbourhoods. She founded two children’s charities offering therapeutic support: Place2Be, which continues to deliver counselling support in schools, and Kids Company which she worked at for two decades. Camila refuses to compromise because she believes that too many people serving vulnerable children have had to do this in order to ensure the survival of their organisations. She believes it’s important to stand up against the pressure aimed at agencies who are compelled into clinical practices which clinicians often don’t believe in but nevertheless sustains their funding.

She is the author of three books exploring social and therapeutic approaches to vulnerable children and families. The most recent is called Kids: Child Protection in Britain: The Truth co-authored with The Sunday Times’s forensic journalist/editor Tim Rayment. She is also the recipient of many awards but the biggest and most important gift she describes is the learning she acquired from the courageous children she and her team had the privilege of working with. She doesn’t do vanilla or sepia and won’t wear opaque tights!