A man and a woman have been charged over the alleged abandonment of eight children found living alone in squalor in the NSW Blue Mountains.
A 40-year-old man and a 32-year-old woman were arrested without incident in Katoomba, where the children were discovered earlier this week.
They were charged with multiple counts of abandonment and neglect.
Police removed the children, aged between three and 16, from the house after they were discovered living without adults.
They are now staying in a serviced apartment paid for by the NSW Department of Community Services (DoCS) under the care of a relative, who has come to Sydney from elsewhere in the state to help out.
Police believe the children may have been alone in the house for up to two weeks before they were discovered.
DoCS has said the children do not all have the same parents and it may not be possible to keep all eight children together.
DoCS spokeswoman Annette Gallard said caseworkers from the department had been out to the family on home visits earlier this year and had received a report about the children a week ago.
"We had seen the father and talked to the father and he assured us he was at home," Ms Gallard told Fairfax Radio Network.
"When he spoke to us (he said) that he was concerned about the state of the house and I guess at that point we thought he was clearly going to do something about it.
"We made plans to follow up and check everything was okay. Then, we got the second report that things were much worse and that's when we and the police took action.
"This is a pretty shocking story," she added.
"The situation was certainly terrible for those little children living in the house."
She said the mother, who had had some contact with the children, had been in Melbourne. She could not confirm a report that the mother was meeting a man she had met on an internet dating site.
If the children went into care, it could be hard to keep them together, Ms Gallard said.
"We're going to be thoroughly assessing the case ... the options for their care.
"Clearly, with eight children, we'd like to keep them together but that's a very hard call."
The department was in daily contact with the relative taking care of the children to make sure there were no problems, Ms Gallard said.
"Obviously, we're going to be assisting the family.
"We don't want them to remain in a situation where their needs aren't going to be met, so we need to look at all the options such as providing additional support, or looking for an additional situation where they can be cared for."
Ms Gallard said the children did not all have the same parents.
"They were a bit of a blended family, like many families these days," she said.
The man and woman were each charged with two counts of abandoning a child under the age of seven.
They also face six counts each of failing to provide parental responsibility for a child and eight counts of neglect.
Both were conditionally bailed to appear in Katoomba Local Court on October 8.