My dear colleagues,

It is with a heavy heart that I share with you that Sheila A. Pires passed away peacefully yesterday after a 12-year battle with cancer. She was at home in Brooklyn, New York with her wife and loving partner of 27 years, Kathy Lazear. She was surrounded by her immediate family and close friends during the last weeks of her life.

Sheila has been a part of my life for the past 24 years. I was incredibly fortunate to call her a mentor, advisor, confidant, and dear friend. She has impacted the children’s services world so profoundly and, I am confident, for generations to come. Sheila, as someone who never shied away from operationalizing her values, knew that our field needed a roadmap for conceptualizing and designing quality public systems. Sheila surrounded herself with leaders in the field and, putting pen to paper, wrote Building Systems of Care: A Primer (Primer). Over the last 22 years she has used that roadmap to teach and support state and community leaders to create rational and sustainable systems that support children and their families. To quote Sheila herself, from this seminal 2002 publication, “This author has learned much from leaders in the family movement at both national and local levels… To work in this arena over time, first directly as a system administrator and then as a technical assistance provider to states and communities, has been an endless process of discovery and growth.” May we all continue this same journey in her name.

For those of you who didn’t know Sheila personally, she was brilliant, witty, and caring. She used her thoughtful insights to get straight to the heart of an issue, identify levers for change, and articulate what should happen next. She knew which policy and financing strategies had been tried in which states and would take the time to explain who someone should talk to and what the next step should be; it was like she had a rolodex in her head. She was always willing to explain a point or provide a resource and, throughout her career, and even in her final weeks, she continued to invest in people working in this field. She would argue and debate and question, always in service of moving systems forward. I never saw Sheila lose hope that a state or system would eventually do the right thing for kids and families. She made those of us who had the chance to work with her better and is leaving us all with the responsibility of designing and implementing systems that help.

This is an extraordinarily sad day. What Sheila has and will continue to mean to the field cannot be measured. The loss is incalculable. That loss is not only professional, but deeply personal. Sheila was not only a mentor but also a friend. Her generosity of spirit, sense of humor, and always challenging me to grow will be with me forever.

Kamala Allen, MHS, Senior Vice President, Program & Strategic Planning, Center for Health Care Strategies

After graduating from Boston University in 1971, Sheila taught creative writing at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts and then went to graduate school for English Literature at Georgetown University where she took a job to pay for graduate school as a legislative correspondent for Lester Wolff, a New York Democratic congressman. Sheila would always say that she was honored to be a part of “the feisty NYC Congressional delegation” that included Lester Wolff and Bella Abzug. Sheila was one of the youngest women Congressional Staff Directors and later was appointed Special Assistant to the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and then to the White House as Senior Staffing Specialist for President Jimmy Carter. Joining President Carter’s mandate to “break the white man’s hold” on jobs and advisory committees in the White House, Sheila specialized in recruiting women, minorities, and people with diverse cultural backgrounds, abilities, and experiences. After leaving the White House when Carter’s presidency ended, Sheila went to Harvard’s Kennedy School for Public Policy and received an MPA. Upon her return to Washington, D.C., Sheila was appointed by Mayor Marion Barry as the Acting Administrator for the D.C. Child/Youth Services Administration and the Children’s Coordinator for the Children’s Mental Health Reorganization Office, where she continued her focus on bringing children and youth home from more restrictive placements.

Sheila was an incredibly important person to me personally and to the entire field of youth and family behavioral health. Her impact has been felt across the country, and countless individuals have received the benefits of her work.

Gary Blau, PhD, Former Chief, Child, Adolescent & Family Branch and Former Senior Advisor for Children, Youth & Families in the Office of the Assistant Secretary, SAMHSA; and Executive Director Emeritus of The Hackett Center for Mental Health

Following her work in the Reorganization Office, Sheila became Deputy Commissioner of Social Services for the District of Columbia. She also was proud to serve for ten years as a Board member for Bell Multicultural High School, a public-private high school serving youth with immigration experience. In 1990, Sheila founded the Human Services Collaborative, a policy and technical assistance group focused on children’s behavioral health. During President George W. Bush’s Administration, she was asked to serve as an advisor to the New Freedom Health Commission and co-authored the Children’s Mental Health Policy Brief, increasing the Nation’s focus on behavioral health needs of children and youth. Sheila also co-chaired President Bill Clinton’s Behavioral Health Care Reform Task Force, which was a major force in getting children’s issues on the table.

Sheila’s passing is a profound loss, both professionally and personally. Her contribution to the field of children’s services has been immeasurable. She has improved the lives of countless young people and families through her work at the federal, state, and local levels. As difficult as it is to lose Sheila as a colleague, it is so much more difficult for me and so many people to lose her as a friend. Our hearts go out to her family and to everyone whose lives she has touched.

Beth Stroul, M.Ed., President, Management & Training Innovations, Member of the Mental Health Working Group of the President’s Task Force on Health Care Reform, & Consultant to the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health

Sheila served as a Senior Advisor to quality collaboratives on improving the use of psychotropic medications for children in foster care and for youth in residential treatment facilities. She was Advisor to the Children’s Bureau for the Family First Prevention Services Act, Advisor to the National Quality Improvement Center on Tailored Services, Placement Stability, and Permanency for LGBTQ2S Children and Youth in Foster Care, Senior Advisor to the Technical Assistance Network for Children’s Behavioral Health at Innovations Institute, and Senior Program Consultant to the Center for Health Care Strategies. Partnering with Innovations Institute at the University of Connecticut and the Center for Health Care Strategies, Sheila worked to customize Medicaid for children in foster care, establish cross-agency financing, and re-direct spending from out-of-home placements to home and community-based services. In addition to releasing a second edition of the Primer, and authoring a Child Welfare version of the Primer, she also led the development of a 17 module on-demand and on-line version of the Primer making her work accessible to all.

Sheila wrote the primer on Systems of Care; I had the privilege of participating in some of her training sessions. She has been an incredible colleague and teacher and could readily translate the complexities of financing into plain language that we all could understand. We will miss her deeply but are comforted with the legacy she has left to the field of children’s mental health.

Larke Huang, PhD, Director of the Office of Behavioral Health Equity, SAMHSA

Throughout her 35-year public policy consulting career, Sheila partnered with almost every state government, relevant federal agency, and national technical assistance and policy research center. The close relationships she formed with individuals during partnerships like these lasted a lifetime. It was not only her work itself, but the way she worked and the way she cared about people, that deeply influenced individuals personally and professionally. Sheila was sought after not only for her subject matter expertise, but her uncanny ability to bring people together. She possessed the intelligence to link divergent or disparate ideas and the insight to bring clarity where there often seemed only chaos.

With the knowledge and support of Sheila and her family, I am honored to announce that we have established the Sheila A. Pires Fund (Fund) at Innovations Institute, University of Connecticut Foundation which will support policy innovation and research for effective systems. Through this Fund, Innovations will develop the Sheila A. Pires Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program to engage and train researchers on policy and financing that supports accessible, equitable, and effective child and family serving systems.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in honor of Sheila to the Sheila A. Pires Fund at Innovations Institute, University of Connecticut Foundation online or by making checks payable to the UConn Foundation, Inc., Attn: Data Services, 2390 Alumni Dr., Unit 3206, Storrs, CT 06269-3206. Please use the check notation line to designate the Sheila A. Pires Fund.

Donations may also be made to Bell Multicultural High School (Columbia Heights Education Campus - Washington | DonorsChoose).

I know that many of you have stories and memories of Sheila, and I encourage you to share them in the weeks, months, and years to come. Feel free to send cards and notes to her family at 100 Jay Street, #18C Brooklyn, NY 11201. They would welcome the memories.

It is up to all of us to make sure her memory and legacy are lasting and a force for good in the world.

Sheila, thank you for holding yourself and others to the highest standards. You embodied systems of care values and principles, and we are forever grateful to have been in this work together with you.

With gratitude,

Michelle Zabel, MSS
Executive Director
Innovations Institute
School of Social Work
University of Connecticut