PHILADELPHIA — Philadelphia is launching an independent review of its entire foster-care system and debating whether social workers should wear body cameras on home visits, after the death of a 10-year-old girl in foster care whose foster mother — a Philadelphia schoolteacher — was charged with her murder last week, in a case Awaaz Punjab reported on November 7.
Source: FOX 29 Philadelphia
On Tuesday, November 10, Mayor Cherelle Parker signed an executive order creating a Child Welfare Review Committee of up to 15 members — child advocacy professionals, social workers, and medical and legal professionals — to examine how children in the city are placed in foster care, how foster homes are chosen, licensed and overseen, and what home visits are required. The committee has 120 days from its first meeting to report back.
"The review required by law must take place, but I am requiring the city to do more," Mayor Parker said, according to the reporting on the order.
Source: CBS Philadelphia and FOX 29, via Social Work World
The case behind the review
The girl, who is not named in this report under Awaaz Punjab's minor-safety rule, was found dead last week in the trunk of a car in Lindenwold, New Jersey. Her foster mother, Carprice Williams, 36, has been charged with murder and other offences and is being held without bail; her lawyers have declined to comment. The charges are allegations and have not been proven in court.
CBS Philadelphia reported that the child was placed with Williams in July 2025 by a subcontractor of the city's Department of Human Services (DHS). A lawsuit filed in 2021 had alleged that Williams beat and starved another child in the same home, and, according to court documents cited by CBS, investigators had said she should not be a foster parent again. That lawsuit was settled in 2024. CBS reported it is not clear how Williams passed the child-abuse clearance checks, and DHS has opened an administrative investigation. Lawyers for the child's family told CBS that private agencies certify and monitor foster homes in the city, with the department also involved.
Body cameras for social workers
At a community meeting in West Philadelphia on Tuesday night, City Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr said he and a colleague would introduce a resolution on Thursday, November 12, seeking money for body-worn cameras for social workers making home visits. The cameras would be switched on during visits to record conditions in foster homes and conversations with children.
Jones compared the idea with policing: Philadelphia police officers already wear body cameras, and he asked why social workers should not "memorialize that visit" in the same way, WHYY reported. He argued the footage could show that a child was safe and living in adequate conditions. "This is not the first time this happened, but what we want it to be is for it to be the last time that it does," he said.
The resolution would also ask for council hearings on the Department of Human Services, and for more social workers with smaller caseloads — changes Jones acknowledged would need extra money. He said the aim was to "work to fundraise" for the cameras. No response from social workers, their unions or DHS to the camera plan had been reported by Wednesday.
Supporters say a recording can prove what a home looked like on the day of a visit. Critics of similar plans note a camera cannot show what happened the night before, or what a child felt unable to say with a carer nearby — and that filming children in their own bedrooms raises hard questions about consent, storage and who may watch the footage. The deeper question in this case sits earlier in the system: how a home was certified at all.
What happens next
The body-camera resolution is due before City Council on Thursday, November 12. The mayor's Child Welfare Review Committee will examine placement, licensing and oversight and must report within 120 days of its first meeting. Separately, the criminal case against the foster mother continues in New Jersey, and the Department of Human Services' administrative investigation into the placement remains open.
For Philadelphia's Punjabi and South Asian families — including foster and adoptive parents across the region — the case has become a test of how the city vets the homes it trusts with its most vulnerable children, and of whether the systems meant to check those homes between placements actually work.