No child should be placed in a home which has not first been visited by a trained worker. The fact that an applicant stands high in the community, and that there is no question as to his motives in taking a child, does not relieve an institution or society from the responsibility of seeing the home. How the best intentioned people may subject children to serious dangers through sheer ignorance of the ways of the world, and how a preliminary visit to the home may remove risks, is illustrated by an instance which recently came to the writer’s notice.

A young colored girl had been placed as a nurse maid with an eminently respectable family. The preliminary investigation had been omitted because of the unquestioned character and standing of the man and his wife, who were prosperous, conscientious and sympathetic college-bred people. When the visitor called at the home some months later, she found that the girl had been given a room in a part of the house entirely separated from that occupied by the family, and that the only other person who slept in this wing was a young white man who worked on the place. The possible danger of such an arrangement had not occurred to the family, who immediately remedied the situation when it was pointed out to them.

Most of the regular child-placing agencies have a printed form upon which the visitors report the results of their investigations of foster forms. Form 22 is used by the Florida Children’s Home Society. It is similar in most respects to those in general use among child-placing societies. . . .

Many organizations, as a matter of courtesy, write to applicants whose homes have been investigated, telling them whether or not a child is available to them. Form letters are often used for this purpose.

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