son they want to leave frontline social work. (Survey, County, South West Region) Pre-birth work was a significant and growing area of safeguarding activity, informed by research using Cafcass data which made evident that the number of newborn babies who were the subject of care proceedings in England and Wales more than doubled between 2007–08 and 2017–18, with significant variations across regions (Pattinson et al., 2021). Just under a third of survey respondents reported that infant removals in their area had increased in the past two years. In some areas there had been a significant increase in legal planning and care proceedings being initiated early, particularly involving parents whose children had previously been removed from their care. Forty-one per cent of survey respondents said they had strengthened their pre-proceedings offer for mothers at risk of having an infant removed into care. Twenty-nine per cent said they had introduced or expanded provision working with parents who had had one or more children removed in public law proceedings (recurrent care services). Despite references to a reduction in reliance on residential assessments, several DCSs referred to an increase in cases involving serious harm to babies and judicial caution about recommending the separation of a baby from its mother. 61 5 Care placements 5.1 Current policy background Published in November 2024, the DfE policy paper, Keeping children safe, helping families thrive: Breaking down barriers to opportunity (DfE, 2024d) sets out a range of ‘whole-system and child-centred' reforms to be included in legislation. The first principles set out in the paper centre the reforms on supporting children and families to stay together; when this is not in a child’s best interests, children should be