Beyond removal rates: Prenatal reporting and the challenge of measuring what matters

Abstract

Prenatal reporting to child protection is widely positioned as a mechanism for early intervention, yet questions remain about what such reporting achieves beyond statutory involvement. This short communication draws on recent population-level evidence, including the study by Taplin et al. (2026), which shows that while prenatal reporting occurs in a substantial proportion of pregnancies, it is poorly associated with infant removal, and many families experience no further child protection involvement after birth.Situated within a broader international evidence base, these findings raise important questions about how prenatal reporting is conceptualised and evaluated. While intended to facilitate early identification and support, prenatal reports also generate enduring administrative records that shape future risk assessment and service responses. In this way, prenatal reporting may function not only as a pathway to early intervention, but also as a form of anticipatory surveillance, particularly for families already experiencing structural disadvantage.At the same time, the evidence base is dominated by administrative data, which are well suited to tracking reports and removals but provide limited insight into the availability, quality, or impact of support. As a result, indicators such as removal rates are frequently used as proxies for effectiveness, despite offering a narrow view of what support is provided and how it is experienced. Drawing on emerging evidence on perinatal support models, this paper argues that the absence of a shared outcome framework constrains meaningful evaluation of early intervention.The paper concludes that developing a consensus-based, cross-sector core outcome set is essential to strengthen the evidence base for perinatal support models, by enabling the systematic capture of outcomes that matter to families and practitioners (e.g., access to support, trust, continuity of care, and safety). Without this shift, perinatal support models risk continuing to be evaluated through statutory indicators alone, which represents a misalignment between evaluating what matters to families and practitioners, what meaningful support looks like in practice, and reinforcing inequities under the guise of prevention.