SCOPE directors hire interim project manager

Staff report

WARREN

A management consultant will be reviewing SCOPE Inc.’s practices as Trumbull County commissioners await a plan for the seniors agency’s future.

SCOPE’S executive director, Janet Schweitzer, resigned in a letter dated one week ago. The SCOPE board of directors is seeking a new leader.

Garland Bradshaw, SCOPE board member, said Ralph H. Smith, a management consultant and former Trumbull Memorial Hospital vice president, was named interim project manager by the SCOPE directors Friday, for a period of up to three months.

Smith will review the SCOPE organization and its compliance practices, Bradshaw said.

SCOPE is a 50-year-old nonprofit organization that uses local, state and federal money to operate six senior-citizen centers and provide services in the homes of seniors.

The Ohio Department of Aging, however, has found that SCOPE failed to perform criminal background checks on 22 employees who provide direct care to clients, and on 29 others within the five business days of his or her hiring.

The ODA also said SCOPE had hired two people with criminal records — one in 2008 and one in 2010 — to work directly with clients when the offenses should have prohibited them from being hired. The state’s findings resulted earlier this month in suspension of funding for two programs that paid SCOPE $487,890 in 2011.

The agency plans to appeal the ODA’s findings.

Bradshaw also said 11 board members met with Trumbull County Commissioner Frank Fuda and others involved in the administration of county seniors levy funds.

The commissioners control funding for the countywide senior-citizens levy, from which SCOPE has received about $700,000 per year since 2007.

County commissioners say they still have legal questions after an opinion from the county prosecutor’s office saying they should suspend any further payment of county levy funds to SCOPE Inc.

SCOPE’s current contract, which runs through June 30, awarded SCOPE up to $175,200 to provide in-home services and up to $457,525 to operate the community centers, a total of up to $632,725.