Director

Nancy K. Young, Ph.D. (1993); M.S.W. (1989) University of Southern California School of Social Work.
Email: nkyoung@cffutures.org

Dr. Young is the Executive Director of Children and Family Futures, a California-based research and policy institute whose mission is to improve outcomes for children and families, particularly those affected by alcohol and other drugs. Dr. Young also serves as Director of the federally-funded National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare. She has been involved in numerous projects related to alcohol and other drug issues in the welfare and child welfare systems. These projects include: development of a CSAT-funded technical assistance publication on substance abuse and child welfare; a report on policy issues and effectiveness of substance abuse treatment for welfare reform published by the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors (NASADAD); development of a guidebook for state welfare and substance abuse directors on the substance abuse implications of welfare reform; and the development of a policymakers guidebook on substance abuse issues for the Child Welfare League of America titled Responding to Alcohol and Other Drug Problems in Child Welfare. Over the past seven years, Dr. Young has worked as a consultant to over 30 states and regional offices on prevention and treatment issues affecting families involved with welfare and child welfare.

Prior to her current position with Children and Family Futures, Dr. Young served as research consultant to the Directorate of the State of California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs. During her tenure, she led a consensus effort to develop a statewide outcomes monitoring system in California. Additionally she consulted on the development and was primary author of the California’s TOPPS II application, CalTOP. She successfully built political support within the state’s alcohol and drug administrators and the new state administration to convert CalTOP into an on-going outcomes monitoring system to be implemented as CalOMS.

Dr. Young is a graduate of Cal State Fullerton and received a Masters of Social Work degree and her Ph.D. from the USC School of Social Work.  During her doctoral studies, she was the recipient of a pre-doctoral fellowship with the National Institute on Drug Abuse focused on the public policy and research issues affecting children of substance abusers.