Jan. 14—PORTSMOUTH — The year 2022 is bringing change and new opportunities to the Scioto County Board of Developmental Disabilities.
Among those changes is long-time SCDD employee and Scioto county native, Steve Sowkulech, being promoted to Director of Fiscal and Human Resources, at the Scioto County Board of Developmental Disabilities.
Sowkulech has been an employee of SCDD for over 16 years serving in a variety of roles throughout the organization, including: classroom teacher, Service and Support Administrator, Community Employment Team Leader, and Medicaid Services Manager. Over the past five years, Sowkulech concentrated his focus on more of the fiscal aspect of service rendering.
"During that time, Steve was responsible for monitoring all Medicaid services, providing quality assurance on billable services, and assisting administration with program development to maximize efficiency of our revenues.", according to Matt Purcell, Superintendent of SCDD.
Purcell continued, "Steve's business savvy approach, his solid record of efficiency with public funds, and his dedication to the Scioto County Board of Developmental Disabilities, made him a clear choice for the director role."
Amid the challenges that have arisen while serving people through a pandemic, SCDD has remained true to its values.
"We pride ourselves on being good stewards of taxpayer dollars while also ensuring the needs of those we serve are met," stated Steve Sowkulech, Director of Fiscal and Human at SCDD. "Our main objective will continue to be using our fiscal resources effectively and efficiently to provide services that will lead to the highest quality life for individuals we serve in Scioto County. We will continue to look at ways that we can use technology to become more efficient, in order to provide the highest levels of oversight and accountability."
Human Resources are also an ancillary service to SCDD and one that Sowkulech remarks will be seeing advances and improvements "We will be working to retool the HR department to meet the needs of the agency in a post pandemic world — in order to be more accessible and helpful to our employees, which will increase their accessibility to those we serve. We will strive to build a department that will lead to the recruitment and retention of quality employees."
Scioto County Board of Developmental Disabilities, including the Vern Riffe School employs nearly 100 full and part time employees, all of whom work together to support individuals with disabilities as well as their families and the community as a whole.