On my first training day with Kids Company, 15 trainee volunteers were gathered in one of the charity’s houses used as a therapy centre for children and their families.

We were asked: “So, what does Kids Company mean? What do we do as a charity?” My practical and conditioned mind thought “a charity providing help to underprivileged inner-city London kids and their families”. Next to me a lady called out: “Love – Kids Company is about love.” And she was right. Kids Company successfully and effectively provided love and care to thousands of families for the 19 years it was running. This is a principal and fundamental value that must not be forgotten in the shroud of negative publicity the charity received at the end of last year.

This week the BBC broadcast a documentary, Camila’s Kids Company: The Inside Story, depicting the last months before the charity’s closure, and what the future holds for it. There’s no doubt that an “extraordinary catalogue of failures” led to the charity’s collapse – perhaps Camila Batmanghelidjh could not control the beast she created. Regardless, I can’t help but feel devastated about how the media’s tirade caused long-term damage to the charity’s reputation – as described in the documentary, “the Kids Company brand had become toxic”.Watching the documentary, I was in tears as it showed footage of crying and screaming Kids Company clients at the gates of its largest walk-in centre. They didn’t buy The Times or The Guardian or watch BBC News – for these parents and children the closure of the charity was sprung upon them unawares, and the consequences were disastrous. The charity operated as a family and the media undermined the trust people had in Camila’s model of care, her family of helpers.

I was working with Kids Company as a volunteer up to the very last days of its operation, and I was a witness of the devastating effects of the media investigations into the charity. For three weeks in the summer of 2015, I volunteered with Kids Company on projects which included a play scheme based in London schools, and residential weeks where the kids stay away from home for five nights and partake in fun activities, including swimming, kayaking, and horse-riding. For most of the children, the residential weeks are their first experience outside of the concrete jungle.

On arriving at the venue where the residential camp would take place for the week, a staff member of Kids Company informed the group of volunteers that the next two residential weeks were to be cancelled due to the ongoing investigations into allegations of sexual abuse. This meant that the charity was not allowed any contact with children – every school helper, volunteer, mentor, therapist and so many more people working with the charity’s kids had to withdraw immediately from the children they looked after.

It was the most deflated I have ever felt. To feel such complete hopelessness for those children, who with no warning were to be left without any of the care they had been receiving on a weekly basis, was heart-breaking. Even more so now that the police investigation into sexual abuse, which some Kids Company staff blamed for its closure, has found no evidence of criminality. Students who have never had contact with the charity before may feel like recent happenings are far removed from them. You would be wrong. In fact, the Kids Company summer residential camps were inspired by a similar scheme in Cambridge and brought to the charity by two Cambridge graduates. These Cambridge alumni and ex-Kids Company employees are launching a new charity, ‘Free To Be’. The model of Kids Company is not broken – I have seen and experienced the charity’s success and ‘Free To Be’ will offer similar residential holidays to those that were so popular in Kids Company. There will also be a mentoring programme and therapeutic after-school groups that will be set up during 2016.

You cannot quantify this kind of care provided to disadvantaged children, but I have seen the real benefits of the work that Kids Company did, and now Free To Be will do. Volunteer for just one week of your summer – it was the most rewarding experience I have ever had and I cannot recommend the work that these schemes do highly enough.