Access to Recovery (ATR) Provides Recovery Supports
for People with Substance Use Disorders
ATR UPDATE | June 2021
In This Issue
  • Save The Date - Virtual Symposium - 9/14/21
  • Attitude, Gratitude and Fortitude - A Combination That Works - Tom's Story
  • Exploring Employment Challenges: Barriers to Employment for People Returning from Incarceration
  • Focusing In: The impact of Incarceration on Black and LGBTQ+ Job Seekers with SUDs
  • Seeing It In Action - Fictional CORI Video Conversation
  • ATR's Newest Team Member - Erin Allain, MS
LOOK FOR MORE INFORMATION COMING TO YOUR INBOX SOON!
Attitude, Gratitude and Fortitude - A Combination That Works
Tom W. can’t help but be completely open when he talks about his past. He doesn’t shy away from speaking of the mistakes he’s made, challenges he’s faced, or the number of times he’s had to pull himself up and start over. He shares his story like a person who has been given a second and even third chance at life.

Tom was the hardworking kid who turned into the hardworking adult running a car dealership. He was on top of his career and responsible for numerous employees and millions of dollars in revenue. Tom was also the guy who used drugs, ran into trouble, was separated from his family, spent 13 years in prison, suffered from health issues that prohibited him from working regularly, and eventually ended up without a stable place to live.

But the first night he became truly homeless and needed help from a shelter was also his last.
Gathering knowledge and strength from every opportunity he’d been through, Tom took full advantage of every resource offered at the Sober Home he moved into the next day, and he never looked back. In a conversation regarding his life now, you would inevitably hear his mantra: stick with the program, pay attention to the things that work, learn as much as you can in every situation, and keep plugging away.

This road map is what led Tom to Access to Recovery (ATR) and his ATR paid sponsorship to our Career Building Initiative service at the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology’s 15-week HVAC&R (heating, ventilation, air conditioning & refrigeration) program. This fast-tracked, 2,000-credit-hour program provided hourly work-study benefits and the toolkit and key certifications needed to obtain the Massachusetts Refrigeration Technician license he received upon graduation in December 2020.

Although concerned that his prior experiences would hinder his future job prospects, by early 2021 he was hired by a CORI-friendly employer and secured a full-time maintenance supervisor position. This job provides Tom with many things: a steady paycheck, an upscale apartment to live in, and an invaluable sense of worth and purpose that he has been missing for some time. His new employer even provides opportunities for career enrichment in the form of continuing education courses on hundreds of topics to further his knowledge in his field—an extra he has been drawing upon on an almost daily basis.

Attitude, fortitude, and gratitude—these words express Tom’s deep commitment to the journey he is on, even when faced with difficulties. He doesn’t dwell on the past; he celebrates how far he’s come. It’s because of this Tom feels certain of his path. For the immediate future, Tom says he’s happy to sit in his new apartment with his father, watching a Bruins game—something he says he couldn’t have done without the help of ATR.
Exploring Employment Challenges: Barriers to Employment for People Returning from Incarceration
People with substance use disorders (SUDs) returning from incarceration face a variety of barriers when returning to their communities, impacting opportunities for education, hiring, promotion, and long-term earning prospects.

Incarceration often results in job and housing loss, separation from family and community, and trauma. Reentry from incarceration presents its own challenges, including lack of social and institutional support structures, legal barriers, stigma, and lower earning potential. For individuals with already weak ties to the labor market, the aftereffects of incarceration may become a life sentence.

For formerly incarcerated people, finding employment with long gaps in resumes, strict occupational licensing requirements, difficulty sealing or expunging criminal records, and barriers to basic requirements for obtaining employment (such as a birth certificate, driver’s license, appropriate attire for interviews, and transportation) result in higher than average unemployment rates.

These are just a few of the challenges faced by people who struggle with SUDs who become incarcerated; this is not intended to be an exhaustive list. We also recognize that these challenges impact different groups of people in unique ways that can magnify the difficulty with seeking and sustaining recovery.
Focusing In: The Impact of Incarceration on Black and LGBTQ+ Job Seekers with SUDs
There are so many communities often left out of the conversation about employment after incarceration. With June being Pride month, honoring LGBTQ+ people on the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan, as well as the celebration of Juneteenth, a (new) federal holiday celebrating the freedom of Black people who had been enslaved in the United States, it’s important to acknowledge barriers to employment for these communities, understanding that these barriers are compounded by the complex challenges of recovering from SUDs.

Since the 1970s, the “War on Drugs,” which primarily criminalized Black people who used opioids and crack cocaine, caused a steep increase in the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses. Strict sentencing laws and mandatory minimums also kept people incarcerated for longer periods of time.
We know that incarceration and reentry does not impact all people the same way. People who identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community and/or are people of color face additional challenges related to their very identities both before and after incarceration. Black adults are 5.9 times more likely to be incarcerated than White adults, and LGBTQ+ people are also incarcerated at significantly higher rates than heterosexual and cisgender people.

Focusing on SUDs, Black people have been disproportionally impacted by the opioid epidemic, with higher overdose death rates attributed to synthetic opioids than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States. While the rate of substance use among LGBTQ+ people isn’t well researched, it’s estimated that between 20 and 30 percent of LGBTQ+ people may be struggling with SUDs—a significantly higher rate than in the general population.

For people with SUDs, seeking and attaining sustainable employment is already challenging. The impact of discrimination based on race/ethnicity and sexual orientation or gender identity multiplies the problem. Add to that calculation a criminal record, and the barriers to employment can feel insurmountable. According to a nationally representative sample, the unemployment rate among formerly incarcerated people is over 27 percent (five times higher than the national average), as a result of structural barriers to securing employment after release from incarceration. The challenge of finding employment is intersectional, meaning that multiple aspects of identity or lived experiences can overlap to create a unique set of challenges with gaining employment.

People of color face racism and discrimination entering and reentering the labor market. Black job seekers are 50 percent less likely to receive a call back from interviews compared to White job seekers and also have weaker network ties to the labor market, with fewer friends and family members willing to recommend them. Even after accounting for criminal justice involvement (among other attributes), employed Black and Hispanic people have lower total earnings than their White counterparts.

For people who identify as LGBTQ+, stigma and discrimination also result in challenges obtaining sustainable employment. According to a nationally representative survey of U. S. households, 35 percent of LGBTQ+ respondents reported being harassed at work, and 58 percent heard derogatory comments about sexual orientation and gender identity at work. LGBTQ+ people have also reported unsafe or inaccessible bathrooms, inadequate healthcare coverage, benefit sharing based on outdated definitions of family, fear of coming out, and lack of representation in union contracts. Multiple studies have found that LGBTQ+ job seekers are less likely to be invited for a job interview or offered a job.
Where does ATR stand?

At ATR, we value diversity in all forms and work to reduce barriers to employment for our participants. We remain committed to continuous improvement of our policies and practices to support participants who identify as formerly incarcerated people, people of color, and LGBTQ+. We prepare participants for having critical conversations about criminal histories that may appear on a MA Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) and actively seek out CORI friendly employment trainings and career opportunities. We also offer our Paths to Empowerment (P2E) job readiness curriculum in both English and Spanish.

The ATR team, in partnership with MA’s Bureau of Substance Addiction Services (BSAS), strives to:

  • explore new opportunities to increase diversity among ATR participants,

  •  interweave culturally competent and compassionate practices into our job readiness curricula,

  •  analyze our data to monitor for inequitable outcomes,

  • provide and search for training opportunities for our staff and community partners to learn more about the diverse communities we serve,

  • and advocate for sustainable employment opportunities for all ATR participants in the communities we serve.

Here are some additional resources to explore barriers to employment for these disenfranchised communities:

Reentry from Incarceration







Black or African American Job Seekers




LGBTQ+ Job Seekers
SEEING IT IN ACTION
To see a fictional scenario between ATR staff and JVS/MassHire Boston Staff, Kevin Beltrami, demonstrating the types of questions/answers an applicant with prior criminal justice system-involvement might hear as they rejoin the workforce, click below.
REACHING OUT - WE'RE EXPANDING!
We are so excited to announce that we have officially added a fifth service area—we expanded to Lowell in June 2021! Institute for Health and Recovery (IHR) has an ATR office in downtown Lowell and is now accepting referrals from our authorized referral portals in the area. As in all of our other service areas, we are partnering with the Lowell MassHire Career Center to run our Paths to Empowerment (P2E) job readiness course, and are actively working on bringing on new job training providers for our career building services. We look forward to offering our services within Lowell and getting to know a new community. 
ATR's Newest Team Member
ATR is pleased to announce the newest addition to our team:
Erin Allain, MS
Erin joined the ATR team in March 2021 as a Senior Program Associate for Advocates for Human Potential (AHP). She collaborates with ATR leadership to provide ongoing quality assurance and improvement of the Paths to Empowerment (P2E) curriculum and facilitation as well as support for ATR coordinators. 

Prior to joining the ATR team, Erin worked in the criminal justice field as a trainer and technical assistance provider working with jails, prisons, and residential reentry centers on solutions-focused evidence-based practices. She developed and led trainings on best practices for working with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals, including motivational interviewing, effective case management, trauma-responsive and gender-informed care, and the Risk-Need-Responsivity model.

When she’s not working on ATR, Erin is working on completing her PhD in Sociology at UMass Boston. She also enjoys gardening, hiking, and spending time with family and friends. 

As you can see from the video above, Erin has quickly jumped into her role with enthusiasm!.


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This newsletter provides information about discussing criminal history with employers. It is for informational purposes only, pertaining directly to the state of Massachusetts and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. Each state has different rules about viewing, sealing, and expunging criminal records - to find out information related to states other than Massachusetts, please visit your state's official website. For information about expanding expungement and record sealing in your state, visit the Clean Slate Initiative. (https://cleanslateinitiative.org/)
ATR offers real solutions. Thousands of people in Massachusetts can now access desperately needed recovery support services to help them recover from addiction.

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