Chap. 305.—An ACT to amend and reenact Section 11, as amended, of Chapter
105 of the Acts of Assembly of 1922, approved ila eld 1922, relating to
the Children’s Bureau of the Department of Public Welfare, and the fees
paid for the maintenance of certain children. {S 187]

Approved March 17, 1948

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,
approved February twenty-seventh, nineteen hundred twenty-two,
be amended and reenacted, as follows:

Section 11. The board is hereby authorized and empowered to
create a children’s bureau, and if such bureau be created, the Com-
missioner 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 welfare
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
of public welfare and to public and private agencies measures,
curative and remedial, and preventive or constructive, for the im-
provement 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 declared 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 men-
tally 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 deten-
tion for children, for the temporary care of its wards. The board
is further authorized to make a careful physical and mental exami-
nation of every such child, to investigate in detail the personal
and family history of the child and its environment, and to place
children in public institutions or in suitable families, suitable private
institutions or agencies. Such public institutions may be either
within or outside the State, but in other cases children shall not be
placed outside the State except with the consent of the guardian or
of either parent. Children committed by the board to State institu-
tions 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 or placed by the
board, as provided by this section there shall be paid by the State
out of the appropriation for criminal expenses the following per
diem allowances: For the first seven children not to exceed one dol-
lar and seventy-five cents each; for the next ten children not to ex-
ceed one dollar and fifty cents each; for the next ten children not to
exceed one dollar and twenty-five cents each; for the excess above
twenty-seven children not to exceed one dollar each.

2. An emergency exists and this act is in force from its passage.