ASHLAND – Ashland County Commissioners have hired Peter Stefaniuk as the next director of the county’s department of Job and Family Services.
Stefaniuk is stepping in at the helm of a department that has seen a high rate of turnover in leadership in recent years. He replaces Jim Williams, who was fired last December. Williams had replaced Cassandra Holtzmann after she was fired in 2016.
An Ashland County native and resident, Stefaniuk has a background prosecuting child abuse and neglect cases and advising agencies on legal matters in children’s services and adult protective services cases.
He has worked in the Ashland County Prosecutor’s office since 2016. Prior to that he worked in private practice as a defense attorney in child welfare cases, and before that he worked eight years as in-house counsel for Richland County Children Services.
Stefaniuk said he has worked intimately with child welfare agencies, often directly with the Children’s Services Division of the Ashland County Job and Family Services Department.
“I have worked for a number of directors, and looking here in Ashland County in the time that I’ve been here, I have seen some of the issues and the needs,” he said. “I feel confident that I can help in a lot of areas.”
Stefaniuk said he believes the JFS department is staffed with good people, and he understands they do difficult work.
He is excited to meet and work with more of the staff at JFS, to engage with community leaders and to help bridge gaps between the department and other entities such as law enforcement agencies, mental health agencies and the faith-based community.
“This agency serves the community and its needs in many ways, and in doing that it’s important to collaborate with the county agencies,” Stefaniuk said.
While Stefaniuk has had some supervisory roles, he does not have experience managing an agency on the scale that this new job will require.
Commissioners said they intend to be “more hand-on” with Stefaniuk than they were with previous directors of the department, not to micromanage but to offer support.
“We need to make sure we set him up for success and not failure, so we’re going to ask him to do a lot more training in the areas we feel he’s the weakest at,” commissioner Denny Bittle said.
Throughout the hiring process, commisioners they were looking for someone with strong managerial skills who could help improve the atmosphere at JFS and build relationships with other stakeholders.
“We met with all staff members at the JFS, all departments, and their recommendation was that they would like to see somebody local this time. There were very vocal about that,” Bittle said, adding that the search committee also strongly recommended hiring a local candidate.
The search committee included representatives from the local law enforcement, church and mental health communities and a representative from the Ashand County Council on Aging.
The committee reviewed more than 30 applications and interviewed four candidates before selecting Stefaniuk.
A 1994 graduate of Mapleton High School, Stefaniuk graduated from The College of Wooster with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy in 1998. He received his Juris Doctorate from Cleveland State University, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 2003 and was admitted to the Ohio Bar that year.
He now lives in Ashland County with his wife, Rebekah, and their five children.
Stefaniuk’s salary will be $80,000, and he will begin in the new role May 14.
