Public Event: Camila Batmanghelidjh at JAGS

In support of the James Allen’s Community Music Centre Campaign

‘The Terrorised and terrified: Teenagers in Britain’

It’s demanding, sometimes dangerous work, trying to reconnect some of Britain’s most damaged and vulnerable children and young people to ‘normal’ behaviour, but rewarding. Kids Company director and psychotherapist, Camila Batmanghelidjh, discussed the success of her projects, externally evaluated so it’s transparent for all to see. Working in schools and at street level centres, Camila and her team take on the role of carers with programmes designed to support the parents. Being trained to understand the psychology and providing loving care has excellent results: in 90-100% of cases, they return to education at school, even university.

Monday night’s audience in the Holst Hall brought parents and non-parents together, far beyond the JAGS community. In the Q&A session, experts and interested adults and pupils alike listened intently as Camila explained the psychology behind her work, how she identifies 4 different groups of disturbed children, the internalisation and externalisation of feelings, the clash between the rear lobes of the brain, which feel emotion, with the frontal lobes which regulate. It was sometimes heart-wrenching listening to the anecdotes. Camila talked us through how therapists work slowly and patiently to help children unlock frozen memories to deal with them through mimicry.

Things can turn around. The sense of failure has been addressed: Kids Company now runs a series of nationally recognised, cumulative modules to stem the sense of falling behind. As a Patron of the Community Music Centre Campaign, Camila recognises the value of music and the arts for these children, potentially powerful ways of externalising the emotions of terror and being terrorised that afflict those teenagers with whom she works.

www.kidsco.org.uk/         www.jags.org.uk/jacmc/

Photos show Camila with members of the audience on 14 March, and sixth formers leading a drama workshop at the Kids Company Camberwell Centre.

Alison Venn

16 March 2011