The NSW branch of the YMCA, which claims 400,000 child attendances a year at its 74 before- and after-school care locations, is not a child-safe organisation and may not have the capacity to become one, the royal commission into child sex abuse has been told.

Further, its chief executive, Phillip Hare, and general manager of children's services, Liam Whitley, may not be fit and proper persons to hold management positions in an organisation responsible for the care and protection of children, the commission's counsel assisting Gail Furness, SC, has asserted.

But YMCA NSW asked Justice Peter McClellan, the chairman of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, to reject these proposed findings in its case study on the organisation's handling of child sex abuse allegations against Jonathan Lord.

Lord was in his early 20s and employed as a childcare worker at YMCA Caringbah when he abused boys aged between six and 16 for two years from 2009, including on YMCA premises. He was jailed for a minimum of six years in 2012 for 13 offences involving 12 children.

Ms Furness listed 14 counts on which the YMCA was not a child-safe organisation when it employed Lord. They included the way he was recruited, a lack of proper induction and training for staff, a failure to implement child safety policies, tolerance of inappropriate touching of children, allowing Lord to be alone with them in secluded places and the lack of a confidential reporting system for staff.