A department report says one-third of NSW's 15- and 16-year-olds have been reported to Community Services as being neglected or abused and that just over one in four of the state's children was "known to DOCS" in June last year. Only a small proportion of reported cases are investigated and only 3 per cent of children reported as abused or neglected are found by DOCS to have been harmed.

Dysfunction is a subjective assessment, of course. I expect, for example, that a neighbour of 14 years ago, a woman, who objected to my having my 12-year-old son mow the lawn reported that abuse to DOCS. But the cold fact is that there is no mistaking, unless you're DOCS, serious cases of abuse or neglect of children.

What can be done about these seriously dysfunctional families? Many people would have Centrelink payments withdrawn, but clearly that is going to have an impact on the children and promote criminality. Others want the children removed, but where to? Foster families are not in free supply and many children from dysfunctional families are not suitable to join a traditional family. And rescuing the children of only the most dysfunctional families leaves a great many children in less seriously dysfunctional families being harmed or at risk of being harmed.

I hope on Monday to write about a charity in the US and Britain that offers money to women junkies and alcoholics who undergo sterilisation, and I believe this could be made dramatically more effective by extending it to both women and men who are helpless gamblers, violent, unemployable, ferals or chronically mentally ill. At the very least this charity would reduce the number of reports to the inept DOCS.

In the meantime tell us what can be done about dysfunctional families. And what is a dysfunctional family?