Child Youth and Family are supporting a teenager charged with a violent sex attack on a tourist visiting Waiheke Island.

A teenage mum has been charged with hurting her baby by holding his head under water.

Social workers failed to respond to 20 warnings that the children were being abused and neglected by their father, a convicted child rapist, and their mother.

When Alex MacKay was in a cell and heard his sister crying and pleading over the phone for him to stop and think before turning to crime again, he listened.

A father who forced his children to cover up their injuries after he beat, slapped, whipped and strangled them has been imprisoned for four years.

The mother who left her five children in a van in a SkyCity Casino carpark while she and her partner gambled hopes to become a social worker.

The new child protection system will bring teachers, doctors and social services together to protect each of New Zealand's 20,000 to 30,000 most vulnerable children.

An eight-month-old who had been in the care of a CYF caregiver for a week died when she became tangled in the blankets she was sleeping in, a coroner has found.

Child protection officials believe New Zealand may be finally tackling its child abuse problem after the first drop in abuse cases for at least eight years.