Pair Charged Over Abandoned Children!!!!!!!

A man and a woman have been charged over the abandonment of eight children in the Blue Mountains.

A 40-year-old man and a 32-year-old woman visited a government agency today and were arrested by police.

The pair have been charged with two counts of abandoning a child, six counts of failing to care for a child and eight counts of child neglect.

On Tuesday afternoon eight children, aged between three and 16, were removed from squalid conditions in a home in Katoomba.

It is believed they had been there for up to two weeks without supervision, left with very little food.

The children are now in the care of DoCS.

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 on Friday.

"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."

It was initially thought the mother had taken off to Melbourne with a man she had met on an internet dating website.