eKART Services Give Perry Countian Jessica Jones a Boost into Employment to Help Further Recovery

Jessica Jones is in a good place. She’s nearly earned her first college degrees, she’s working steadily and helping others in the process, and she’s planning for a real future beyond addiction.

In fact, that’s a very good place considering that just three years ago she was incarcerated, battling substance use issues, and uncertain what would happen next. But as her story shows, one’s lowest point doesn’t have to define them.

Jessica Jones

A native of Perry County, Jones is in the midst of a turnaround that she knows can ultimately serve to help others. And it’s a turnaround for which she gives some credit to the support she received from the East Kentucky Addiction Recovery and Training (eKART) program for helping ensure she was able to enter the workforce and succeed while continuing to work on her recovery.

An initiative of Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program (EKCEP), Inc., eKART works with local drug courts and other agencies to bridge the gulf between recovery and productive participation in the workforce by providing individuals with valuable career, training, and supportive services while actively cultivating transformational job opportunities.

Jones began working with Barbara Smith, a job entry and retention support specialist with eKART, in August 2019 while completing drug court in Leslie County. But she says her story really started before then, when she’d dropped out of college while battling addiction, and later jailed for 14 months.

“That’s really where I started to find myself,” she says. “When I went to jail, thank God I have a caring enough family who did know to talk to people and tell them I needed help and didn’t give up on me. So, when I was in jail I started thinking that I’m grateful. I have people who care about me, and I’m getting better and this is what I want to do.”

Jones says at the time she met Smith she was already thinking about ways that she could use her own story to help others like her, so when her drug court coordinator and Smith discussed peer support training, it seemed like a good fit. She was already re-enrolled in school and working toward earning two associate’s degrees at Hazard Community and Technical College (HCTC) with an ultimate plan to earn a bachelor’s degree in human services.

Peer support specialists can play an important role in individuals’ recovery from substance use, working one-on-one or in a group setting to draw upon their own experiences to help set goals and offer support in clients’ recovery. Jones says she already knew that peer support could be a great step for her goals to begin helping others facing addiction recovery.

“I had a peer support specialist in drug court, and she was like me, and so I opened up to her way more than I did my therapist or case manager because I knew she had been where I had been,” Jones says. “I knew I wanted to do something like that while I finished school.”

Smith enrolled Jones into peer support training, with eKART covering the costs of the program. By the time Jones finished her training she’d already landed a job, working inpatient care at a women’s recovery program. She eventually left that position to work in peer support at All In Recovery, an outpatient treatment center in Laurel County, where’s she’s continuing to work today.

Now seven months out of Drug Court and working her plan for a career and life after addiction, Jones says she’s in a position to actually refer clients to Smith and eKART when possible to help others get back on their feet and into employment as they work on their own recovery.

“Even today, as long as I’ve been out of Drug Court, now I get to work alongside Barb and get to help my clients,” she says, noting that she recently referred two of her own clients to eKART. “These programs are out there not to judge you, but to help you.”

Jones points to the services she was able to obtain through eKART in noting that the program played a big role in her entry into the workforce and being able to maintain employment even before her work began in peer support. eKART helped her purchase clothing for work at a restaurant in Hazard and provided her with a fuel card to cover transportation costs to and from work, and Smith also enrolled Jones into a work experience program for a job at a convenience store in Perry County that helped cover her wages during the course of enrollment.

Jones says she never thought she would be able to so quickly land any job with her record, but says because of eKART she has experience and the support she needs to maintain her work and forge ahead with her plans.

“That was a life saver for me,” she says. “I had five felony charges and I thought getting out of jail there was absolutely no way with me in drug court, with five felony charges that weren’t going to come off my record until I graduate, there’s nobody in the world that is going to give me the opportunity to work for them. That’s where eKART came in for me, advocating that people can turn it around and do deserve second chances.”

To learn more about the services available through eKART, visit www.ekcep.org.

EKCEP, a nonprofit workforce development agency headquartered in Hazard, Ky., serves the citizens of 23 Appalachian coalfield counties. The agency provides an array of workforce development services and operates the Kentucky Career Center JobSight network of workforce centers, which provide access to more than a dozen state and federal programs that offer employment and training assistance for jobseekers and employers all under one roof. Learn more about us at http://www.ekcep.org, http://www.jobsight.org and http://www.facebook.com/ekcep.