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.

A Whangarei grandmother has slammed Child, Youth and Family (CYF) for dumping her two young nephews at her doorstep without providing enough money to look after them.

CYF is reviewing the cases of more than 200 children thought to have been subjected to continued abuse and neglect despite repeated warnings.

A 12-year-old girl who took her own life while in foster care was not given proper support after she claimed to have been sexually abused by a caregiver, a coroner said today.

Police have appealed against the discharge given to the mother who left her children in a SkyCity Casino carpark while she and her partner gambled for two hours.

Police have denied there is a problem with underage prostitution, writes Dave Crampton. Perhaps this is because nobody has laid a complaint with the police?

A 14-month-old baby found abandoned on a Christchurch street late at night is now in Child, Youth and Family care.

A communication breakdown between police and Child Youth and Family meant a teen was on the run for three months before crashing and dying in a stolen car.

Kiwi parents are "unwittingly killing'' up to 60 babies each year, and government agencies are failing to prevent the needless deaths, a coroner warns.

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

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.

A mother who abandoned five children in a van in the SkyCity carpark wants to become a social worker, a court has been told.