Associate Executive Director, Child and Family Services - Baltimore County

How This Role Contributes To The Y’s Mission

The Associate Executive Director of Child & Family Services leads the people, partnerships, and programs that help Head Start and Early Head Start families reach their goals. This critical leadership role oversees a large family-services team and ensures children and families receive compassionate, coordinated, and responsive support. Success requires a leader who can build trust, navigate difficult conversations with care, turn vision into action, and use data to improve outcomes. Strong experience leading teams and supporting children and families is essential.

This Work Is Right For You If You

• Have significant experience in family services, case management, social services, or community-based programming.
• Have successfully led managers and large or multi-layered teams.
• Build strong relationships with families, associates, leaders, and community partners.
• Can support families through challenging situations with compassion, professionalism, and sound judgment.
• Understand child development and believe in meeting families where they are.
• Can lead complex projects from planning through implementation.
• Communicate a clear vision and build team commitment.
• Think creatively, ask thoughtful questions, and are willing to try new approaches.
• Use data to identify trends, determine root causes, and guide decisions.
• Lead by example and understand that meaningful results are achieved through people.

Essential Functions

• Lead, coach, and develop Family Services Directors and the broader family-services team.
• Oversee case management, family goal-setting, referrals, parent engagement, and access to community resources.
• Ensure families receive individualized, culturally responsive support based on their needs and strengths.
• Oversee eligibility, recruitment, selection, enrollment, and attendance processes.
• Monitor enrollment, attendance, family engagement, referrals, and program outcomes.
• Use data to identify service gaps, investigate root causes, and lead improvement strategies.
• Build partnerships with schools, community organizations, service providers, and government agencies.
• Coordinate disability, mental-health, and transition services with families, specialists, and community partners.
• Lead program initiatives and projects from development through implementation and evaluation.
• Ensure compliance with Head Start standards and applicable organizational, local, state, and federal requirements.
• Maintain accurate, timely, and confidential records and reporting.
• Support program budgets, monitoring reviews, audits, and corrective-action plans.
• Represent the Y in community collaborations and provide hands-on support at program locations as needed.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in social work, human services, family studies, education, social sciences, or a related field.
• At least five years of progressively responsible experience in family services, case management, social services, education, or community-based programming.
• At least three years of leadership experience supervising managers or multi-layered teams.
• Demonstrated experience connecting families with resources and coordinating services across agencies.
• Strong relationship-building, communication, project-management, and problem-solving skills.
• Experience analyzing program data and using findings to guide decisions.
• Experience managing or monitoring budgets preferred.
• Head Start or Early Head Start experience preferred.
• Knowledge of child development and family-centered practices.
• Ability to travel among program and community-partner locations.
• Ability to obtain and maintain required background clearances, training, and certifications.
• All Y associates agree to abide by The Code of Conduct with Youth that sets clear expectations for associates and volunteers to ensure a safe and respectful environment for young people. It emphasizes treating youth with respect and fairness, avoiding inappropriate physical or verbal interactions, and adhering to established standards of affection. The policy strictly prohibits any form of abuse, bullying, or harassment and mandates the reporting of suspected mistreatment. Additionally, associates and volunteers must complete training on child abuse prevention and comply with legal reporting requirements to safeguard youth.