SITE Services Help Billie Hutchinson Step Back on Career Path

After four years of incarceration, Billie Hutchinson was ready for a fresh start. 

A native of Owen County, Hutchinson had also spent several years in addiction, and after regaining her freedom knew she had a lot of work in front of her. That beginning would certainly involve a new career, something she was able to begin with help from a program called SITE (Strategic Initiative for Transformational Employment) that while new to her has helped hundreds of Kentuckians with a past addiction successfully return to the workforce. 

Hutchinson first heard of SITE from a friend in April 2022, and soon after being released from jail contacted the program for assistance with getting her career on track. She was eventually referred to Theresa Turner, a SITE support specialist for counties in the Northern Kentucky region.  

Billie Hutchinson

An initiative of Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program (EKCEP), SITE works to bridge the gulf between recovery and productive participation in the workforce by providing eligible Kentuckians with valuable career services while actively cultivating second-chance job opportunities. 

Hutchinson was in a position where she needed to begin her professional life anew. She had experience in the human resources field but felt her past record would hinder her job search, and that she didn’t have her own transportation would also be a strike against her. 

“I had spent a little over four years in jail, so I came out and I didn’t have a car, I didn’t have a license,” Hutchinson says. “I had DUI classes that needed to get taken care of.” 

Turner was first able to help with purchasing a pair of shoes for a new job Hutchinson had landed at a local gas station. At the same time, SITE funds covered the cost of a bicycle she could use to get to and from her jobsite while she worked to regain her driver’s license. 

“I was really overwhelmed, because bicycles were way more expensive than I imagined and she bought me a pair of shoes that day,” Hutchinson says. “And so I was able to ride back and forth to work.” 

Eventually, Hutchinson says she was able to land a better paying job with more hours. She still didn’t have a license or car at the time, and getting her license back would require 10 sessions of a DUI class, which include a $30 fee for each session. Turner again assisted with that cost, and later SITE covered the reinstatement fee once Hutchinson was ready to obtain her driver’s license again. 

Hutchinson says it was evident that Turner cared about her success and made it a point to see her personally to celebrate milestones when they occurred. That kind of support was important. 

“She met me down there like each time, she didn’t just send me money or nothing like that,” Hutchinson says. “She would meet me and come and would help me with things.” 

Regaining her license was a big help in her progression, Hutchinson says, but she also knew then that progressing in her career would be an even bigger step. SITE would be there to assist with that transition, as well. 

“I was interested in peer support, maybe being a peer support counselor,” she says. “The program paid for me to take peer support specialist training.” 

Hutchinson says it was while she was incarcerated that she began to help and mentor other inmates, including with Bible classes, and felt she was already experienced in some of the things a peer support specialist could do, particularly using her own experience with addiction to help others who are working their way into active recovery. 

And importantly for her own success, peer support would provide her with an avenue to begin a new career path. She enrolled in classes just shy of two months from her release, the cost of which SITE covered, and by June 2022 she earned certification, something else she says she and Turner could celebrate.  

“When I found out I passed, Theresa was the first person that I contacted because, you know, she made that happen,” she says. 

Fast forward to September 2022, and Hutchinson has leveraged her experience and training into the beginning of a new career. She landed a job with Isaiah House Treatment Center in Versailles, where she is currently a recovery house manager and supervises 20 women who are in the sober living phase of addiction recovery. 

Hutchinson’s days there include activities ranging from facilitating drug tests for those she supervises to helping them find employment and attending behavioral health meetings, among other things. It’s a job that she says can have rewards of its own, and one in which she can play a role in helping others lead lives away from addiction and the obstacles that led them there in the first place. 

“I’m here to be there for them,” she says. 

Hutchinson’s turnaround from incarceration to career was a quick one, and it was a turnaround she says she may not have been able to do without help from SITE. The support she received, from assistance with training costs to seemingly trivial things like a new charger for her laptop (which would enable her to take the test for peer support certification) were what helped ensure that she could continue to build on the work she had already put into herself.  

“You're coming out of a difficult situation where you've got a history and you think probably that history is going to not play in your favor in terms of restarting a career,” she says. “But you’ve got someone like Theresa in your corner who’s able to kind of help you overcome those obstacles. It was detrimental to my success.” 

Not only was that support integral for her, she adds, it is something she encourages others in similar positions to take advantage of, as well. 

“I recommend [SITE] to so many girls that I work with,” Hutchinson notes.  

To learn more about the services available through SITE, and how the initiative might be able to assist you or someone you know, visit www.ekcep.org/site.  

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.