INTRODUCTION

It frequently happens that the state or its agencies feel obliged to take action in order to provide effective protection to children and young people on either an emergency or an interim basis. Emergency measures may be understood as those that need to be taken as a matter of urgency, even before anyone has had a chance to bring the matter to the attention of a legally constituted tribunal. Interim measures, whether following immediately after emergency measures or otherwise, are those authorised by an appropriate tribunal, but before it has had the chance to interrogate the case fully, or before plans have been put in place that would serve the child's long-term security. There is a significant degree of overlap between emergency measures and interim measures. Both are characterised by a perceived need for the state to act more quickly to protect the child's welfare than the normal child protection processes allow, to act indeed before it has been established that the child actually does need protective measures to be taken, or before appropriate measures designed to meet the needs of the child have been identified or put in place. Both are also characterised by their temporary nature, and they will have legal effect, in the case of emergency measures, only until the child or young person can be brought before an appropriate tribunal and, in the case of interim measures, only until that tribunal has had an opportunity to consider what long-term provisions are best suited, and are available, for the particular child in question.

The distinction between emergency and interim measures has never been clear-cut, and the point of division has shifted with the various statutory provisions that will be examined in this chapter. The current law adopts the nomenclature of “emergency child protection measures” to refer to both the removal by a constable of a child to a place of safety and the authorisation by a justice of the peace to any person to do the same; at the same time, contemporary legislation allows for a variety of measures called “interim” orders.