Now, at 67 years old, Christine Scarpati is retiring, but she feels defeated. “We face the same problems after 34 years: too many kids in foster care, not enough foster families, not enough prevention programs or services for parents who want to get their kids back.” 

The Christine Scarpati Story 

As promised, each month I scour industry newsletters, magazines, journals, and newspapers for stories about social workers who inspire us to keep going. This month I want to share with you the Christine Scarpati story as told to me by Karina Bland, a reporter for the Arizona Republic. 

Christine Scarpati is retiring this month from the Child Crisis Center, a non-profit emergency shelter she founded 34 years ago. In a way, she feels like she is retiring in defeat. 

“There is still so much work to be done,” she says.  

Starting with a small shelter in a duplex donated by a nearby hospital, she immediately filled the shelter and had to turn away as many as twelve children a month. Now, with 42 beds, she still has to turn many away. 

“Children arrive here at all hours, often only with the clothes they are wearing. They have been abandoned, neglected, or abused, or sometimes their parents are just in bad situations and there’s nowhere else for the kids to go.” 

During Scarpati’s 34 years at the shelter she founded, funding for child welfare, child-abuse prevention programs, parenting classes, and other support services for families seemed always targeted for cuts. 

“Some years were better than others,” she says. “None were ever great.” 

Scarpati never gave up and through her persistence was able to open a Family Resource Center down the street from the shelter which offers foster-care, licensing, adoption-placement services, parenting classes, play therapy, and support groups.

“It’s difficult work," she tells her staff who have been with her for decades. "You must work one child at a time." 

"Shelter care, no matter how good, is supposed to be temporary. Children should only stay here for a few days or weeks at the most before they go to foster homes, group homes, or to live with relatives. Less often, they go back to their parents. But often, because of the lack of foster homes available, the children have to stay longer."   

“We want these kids to feel normal," she says. She sends them camping and even to Disneyland. “...so when someone at school is bragging about seeing Mickey Mouse, they can say, ‘Me too!’ and show them their Disneyland T-shirt.” 

Now, at 67 years old, Christine Scarpati is retiring, but she feels defeated. “We face the same problems after 34 years: too many kids in foster care, not enough foster families, not enough prevention programs or services for parents who want to get their kids back.” 

In her last week, she met with her board, said a teary goodbye to her staff, and as her last official act, approved the next Disneyland trip.