Chap. 273.—An ACT to amend and re-enact Section 11, as amended, of Chapter
105 of the Acts of Assembly of 1922, approved February 27, 1922, relating to
the Children’s Bureau of the Department of Public Welfare, and the fees paid
for the maintenance of certain children. [S127

Approved March 17, 1944

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia:

1. That section eleven, as amended, of chapter one hundred
five of the Acts of Assembly of nineteen hundred twenty-two, ap-
proved February twenty-seventh, nineteen hundred twenty-two,
be amended and re-enacted, as follows:

Section 11. The board is hereby authorized and empowered
to create a children’s bureau, and if such bureau be created, the
Commissioner of Public Welfare may, subject to the approval of
the board, appoint a director of the bureau and such assistants as
may be necessary. The children’s bureau, subject to the control of
the board, shall have general supervision of the interests and wel-
fare of the mentally defective, dependent, delinquent and neglected
children of Virginia; shall investigate conditions bearing upon this
subject, and shall from time to time recommend to the board ot
public welfare and to public and private agencies measures, curative
and remedial, and preventive or constructive, for the improvement
of conditions and the better safeguarding the welfare of the children
of the State. The board is hereby authorized and empowered to
receive mentally defective, delinquent, dependent and neglected
children committed to it by courts or justices, and all children de-
clared by any court or justice to be delinquent and not suitable for
probation shall be committed to the State Board of Public Welfare,
which board is authorized to establish one or more receiving homes
for the care, supervision and study of mentally defective, delinquent.
dependent or neglected children thus committed to it, or to make
arrangements with satisfactory persons, institutions, or agencies,
or with cities maintaining places of detention for children, for the
temporary care of its wards. The board is further authorized to
make a careful physical and mental examination of every such child,
to investigate in detail the personal and family history of the child
and its environment, and to place children in approved family
homes, in suitable licensed institutions all within the State of Vir-
ginia, unless by written consent of its parent or guardian with
suitable licensed agencies, or in State institutions. Children com-
mitted by the board to State institutions dealing exclusively with
children shall take precedence as to admission over all others and
shall in all cases be received into the said State institution as soon
as possible. Children placed in family homes or institutions may be
transferred for reasons deemed sufficient by the board.

For the maintenance of children detained in receiving or de-
tention homes operated by or for the board, there shall be paid by
the State out of the appropriation for criminal expenses the follow-
ing per diem allowances: For the first five children not to exceed
one dollar and twenty-five cents; for the next ten children not to
exceed one dollar each; for the next ten children not to exceed
seventy-five cents; for the excess above twenty-five children not to
exceed sixty cents.