Hours after Nixzmary Brown was lowered into Brooklyn’s Cypress Hill cemetery before a crowd of weeping family members yesterday, the head of the city’s children services agency announced disciplinary actions against case workers and supervisors involved with her case.

Commissioner John Mattingly of the Administration for Children’s Services also described his plan to shuffle top administrators and create an ombudsman unit for city agencies to follow up on child abuse investigations. To satisfy public scrutiny, he has asked the Department of Investigation to determine whether any additional ACS employees should be sanctioned because of their actions in the case.

The commissioner echoed remarks by the Reverend Robert O’Neil, who earlier in the day at Brown’s funeral service at St. Mary’s Catholic Church on the Lower East Side said Nixzmary is now “beyond the touch of evil,” and that New Yorkers must redouble their efforts to eradicate the abuse of children.

Nixzmary, 7, was found dead last week at the home of her parents, stepfather Cesar Rodriguez and Nixzaliz Santiago, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. The district attorney’s office alleges the girl was a long-time victim of abuse and was ultimately murdered with a blunt blow to the head after she took a container of yogurt without permission. Over the last week, investigators have described an alleged history of physical and sexual abuse of Nixzmary and her siblings, including that they were forced to use a litter box and to eat cat food as punishment. Both parents were arraigned on murder charges Tuesday.

For now, Nixzmary’s sister and four brothers are living with a foster family, a spokeswoman for the family, Awilda Cordero, said. The family hopes Nixzmary’s grandmother will be able to adopt the children and open a scholarship fund for them, she said.

Nixzmary’s white coffin was carried into St. Mary’s by an honor guard of eight cadets from the Harlem Youth Marines. After reading about Nixzmary’s death in newspapers, Lieutenant Colonel Greg Collins volunteered the group’s services to the family.

“I wanted to do something,” he said. “This is a sad situation and it shouldn’t have happened.”

During the traditional Catholic funeral service, which was conducted in Spanish and English, Rev. O’Neil urged families and neighbors to be involved in each other’s lives so that a tragedy such as Nixzmary’s won’t happen again.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and the deputy mayor for health and human services, Linda Gibbs, attended the funeral service.

At the burial, a pile of flower bouquets was trucked in and placed in the grave with Nixzmary’s coffin. As the coffin was lowered, her grandmother, Maria Gonzalez, was nearly incapacitated with grief. A cousin, Jasminda Villanueva, cried out, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry we couldn’t help you.”

Standing off to the side was Iris Rodriguez, sister of Brown’s stepfather, whose family was said to be at odds with the Santiago family after Nixzmary’s death.

“They both have to pay for what they did,” she said. “This is painful for me because he’s my brother, but this is more painful.”

At the Administration for Children’s Services headquarters in Lower Manhattan, Mr. Mattingly said he was confident in his agency’s abilities but that he felt it was necessary to make changes in his administration.

Six children’s services employees are being disciplined because of their involvement with the Nixzmary case. Two supervisors and one child protective worker have been suspended without pay pending disciplinary hearings, and another two child protective workers and one supervisor have been moved under new supervision, Mr. Mattingly said.

“These staff failed to take many of the basic and important steps in this tragic case,” Mr. Mattingly said.

He pointed out that caseworkers failed to take steps to enter the family’s home when Mr. Rodriguez refused them access, despite clear warning signs that abuse was going on inside.

The leader of the union representing the workers, Social Service Employees Union Local 371, called the commissioner’s actions improper and detrimental to the quality of the agency.

“Quite frankly, it’s clear to us that these suspensions are a result of the media frenzy surrounding these events,” Charles Ensley told The New York Sun last night. “It’s an issue of case work practice. That would point to additional training.”

The union will defend the workers “vigorously” in the disciplinary hearings, Mr. Ensley said.