Kids Company: Yentob agreed to step down for emergency funds

But several commentators have asked how the LSE and other organisations missed numerous problems highlighted by civil servants concerned about the charity’s use of public funding, which amounts to a reported £37 million over the course of its 19-year existence.

The government promised Kids Company £20m worth of funding last summer, 12 months before the charity went bust, its founder Camila Batmanghelidjh has alleged.

The Kids Company founder also alleges that the Cabinet Office has had to make extra funds available for local authorities to cope with the needs of at-risk children since the closure of the charity – which is proof, she attests, that the charity was filling a statutory void. It described the charity’s work as an “exemplary model of psychosocial scaffolding”.

Some media critics have claimed that celebrities, donors and the prime minister were “mesmerised” by the high-profile chief executive.

“I fully understood the need for an edgy brand so that children would self-refer, but I could not accept anything less than professional management behind the scenes”.

A spokesman for the charity said: “Kids Company granted the LSE’s School of Social Psychology, led by Prof Jovchelovitch, full and open access to freely observe and research our service delivery and staff in depth”.

However, it now appears that the study may have relied on the charity’s workers a little too heavily.

The report repeats Kids Company’s claim that “its services reach 36,000 children, young people and their families” – a figure hotly contested during the charity’s demise.

The colourful charity boss had use of the private pool at a £5,000-a-month mansion rented by Kids Company – even though the underprivileged youngsters helped by the organisation did not swim in it, according to a newspaper investigation. That was before they learned of the fee attached to LSE’s study.

Coldplay are “looking at options” to save the Treehouse, a facility run by the defunct Kids Company charity.

Questions have now been raised over the report’s rigour, after LSE failed to disclose that Kids Company had funded the study in the first place.

“University departments are regularly commissioned by charities, businesses or the government to undertake pieces of research”, he said.

‘With all funding arrangements, academic impartiality and integrity remain of paramount importance. “If I’ve shed any tears, it’s been for the kids, not for me”.

She said: “Because we have been going for 19 years, some kids that we had in the early days are now older”.

“As the report involved detailed analysis of some of the complex cases Kids Company managed, and widespread engagement with experts, a CSJ researcher was seconded to the charity’s head office”.

The charity is also being investigated over allegations of sexual abuse on its premises.

The report, authored by Prof Sandra Jovchelovitch, a leading psychologist, heaped praise on Miss Batmanghelidjh personally and concluded that Kids Company’s work had made a “substantial difference” to the lives of the children and young people it worked with.