Pennsylvania Act 1921-370 — POOR CHILDREN, CARE BY COUNTIES

Act text

POOR CHILDREN, CARE BY COUNTIES
                 Act of May 20, 1921, P.L. 1030, No. 370              Cl. 23
                                  AN ACT

     To provide for the care, training, and maintenance of certain
        children by the several counties; authorizing the county
        commissioners to establish and maintain separate or joint
        county industrial homes for such purposes; requiring poor
        authorities to place children of certain ages with families
        or in institutions; providing for the care and maintenance of
        certain children in such homes at the expense of the parents;
        and prohibiting the receiving and detaining of children in
        almshouses and poorhouses; and validating similar acts
        heretofore performed by the commissioners of the several
        counties.

        Section 1.  It shall be lawful for the county commissioners
     of any county, or for the county commissioners of two or more
     counties acting together, to establish and maintain an
     industrial home for the care and training of children. Such
     institution or home shall be remote from any almshouse or
     poorhouse and entirely disconnected from the same, and shall be
     under the management of the county commissioners.
        Section 2.  It shall be unlawful for the overseers or
     guardians or directors of the poor, in the several counties,
     cities, boroughs, and townships of this Commonwealth, to receive
     into, or retain in, any almshouse or poorhouse, any child
     between two and sixteen years of age, for a longer period than
     sixty days, unless such child shall be an unteachable idiot, an
     epileptic, or a paralytic, or otherwise so disabled or deformed
     as to render it incapable of labor or service.
        Section 3.  It shall be the duty of said overseers,
     guardians, directors of the poor, or other persons having charge
     of the poor, to place all dependent children who are in or
     committed to their charge, and who are over two years of age
     (with the exceptions named in the second section of this act),
     in some respectable family in this State or in some educational
     institution or home for children; and one of said officers shall
     visit such children, in person or by agent, not less than once
     every six months, and make all needful inquiries as to their
     treatment and welfare, and shall report thereon to the board of
     overseers or other officers charged with the care of such
     children.
        Whenever the parents of any children between the ages of two
     and sixteen years are unable to give them proper personal care
     and attention, but are willing and able to pay for such cares,
     attention, and maintenance, the county commissioners of the
     respective counties may enter into an agreement with the parent
     or parents of such child or children for their care and
     maintenance in such county industrial home at the expense of
     such parent or parents.
        Section 4.  All acts and contracts heretofore performed and
     executed, by or on behalf of any county by its county
     commissioners, by virtue or authority of the act, entitled "An
     act to prohibit the receiving and detaining of children in
     almshouses and poorhouses, and to provide for the care and
     education of such children," approved the thirteenth day of
     June, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-three (Pamphlet
     Laws, one hundred and eleven), are hereby declared to be as
     valid and effectual in law as if performed and executed under
     and by virtue of this act after the date of its passage.