The Government has announced it wants Child Youth and Family completely overhauled and modernised and has asked Paula Rebstock to lead the work.

Doctors are developing protocols to refer obese children to child protection services if their parents ignore medical advice to help their children lose weight.

A High Court child-abuse trial was aborted when it was revealed Child, Youth and Family had failed to hand over 300 pages of documents to the police investigation.

The majority of children admitted to the Starship hospital as the result of suspected abuse or neglect are under 1 year old.

A Hastings woman has been referred to Child, Youth and Family after leaving her 6-month-old baby on the floor of a Hastings KFC restaurant yesterday.

Nineteen youths with unsettled upbringings were honoured for their outstanding achievements at a special ceremony yesterday.

A woman who adopted a child has won the right to paid parental leave, after being told by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment that she wasn't eligible.

An 11-year-old who was behind the wheel of a car being driven erratically and at speeds up to 120km/h has been spoken to by police.

A mum jailed today for almost three years for raising two kids in a clandestine P lab was blasted by a judge as being an "abysmal failure" as a mother.

CYF is investigating a video in which a boy, 6, is seen sculling from a Heineken bottle as part of a Neknominate dare.

Increasing numbers of children have been physically and emotionally abused in the past few years - starkly contradicting welfare officials' claims.

The United Nations children's fund Unicef says children should have a say when they are adopted and when their parents separate.

NZ's child abuse rates are higher than anyone ever realised, officials admit, after bureaucrats bungled the numbers for more than two years.

A CYF caregiver has been humiliated after the organisation wrongly suggested she was being investigated for abuse of a child in her care.

A man who burnt his 5-year-old son's face with a fan heater because the youngster accidentally scorched the carpet has been jailed for almost seven years.

A coroner has slammed police's attempts to locate a troubled teenager who ran away from foster care before being killed in a car crash.

The man accused of burning a 5-year-old child's face with a fan heater has again been remanded in custody.

A five-year-old Christchurch boy suffered severe third-degree facial burns after a man allegedly held a fan heater to his face.

When Robin Vinod turned 17, he couldn't sign a tenancy agreement or be responsible for bills - but that was when CYF left him to fend for himself.

A 13-year-old boy turned down an offer of sex from a woman more than twice his age but she followed him and enticed him into her bedroom, a court has been told.

Instinctively, we feel sympathy for the victim of blackmail, not the deliverer of the threat. Child, Youth and Family was counting on just that emotional response this week when it accused a woman of holding it to ransom over the return of her children.

A woman this week accused of blackmailing CYF became outraged when she learned a convicted killer was getting custody of their child back - while she was in the middle of a so far unsuccessful 7-year battle to regain the right to care for her own kids,

X Factor boy band Moorhouse, judge Stan Walker and Whenua Patuwai took their smooth sounds to at-risk youth held in a boys home in a bid to turn lives around.

An 11-year-old boy fathered a child to a friend's 36-year-old mother in a case that has prompted the Justice Minister to ask why women can't be charged with rape.

Child Youth and Family has launched legal action claiming a woman was trying to blackmail them after it accidentally sent her somebody else's private information.