Opportunity Youth Provides Step onto Career Path for Knox Countian Rachel Johnson

There was a time in Rachel’s Johnson’s life when a job wasn’t high on her list of priorities. Years spent in and out of foster care and an unstable family dynamic resulted in a volatile childhood that ultimately led to a lifestyle of drug abuse and addiction in her teenage years. A career was likely the last thing on her mind.

But things have turned around drastically, she says, and a new sense of faith and the Opportunity Youth program at KCEOC Kentucky Career Center JobSight are playing a role in how Johnson is now viewing what she does next.

Rachel Johnson

“Everything is completely different,” Johnson says. “I actually have goals and dreams, and I actually have an ideal for what a real future should look like.”

A native of Knox County, Johnson is currently a student at Somerset Community College, where she’s working towards an associate’s degree. She plans to transfer to University of the Cumberlands and eventually begin a career in social work.

“When I was a kid in a foster home, I had a social worker who really inspired me,” she says. “If I could help just one person like she helped me, it would be worth it.”

But Johnson’s first steps on a career path weren’t certain just a few years ago. Her parents suffered from addiction early in her life, she says, and while her father tried to raise Johnson and her sister, his addiction presented an obstacle the family couldn’t overcome and they both ended up in the foster system at a young age.

By the time Johnson turned 13, she says she was living again with her father, who by then had completed a stint in jail and had become sober for the first time her life. But that was also when Johnson says she decided to spend more time with her mother, who was battling an addiction of her own.

“I was a little 13-year-old girl who wanted her mom, so I started going out there,” Johnson explains.

By 15, Johnson says she dropped out of high school and started using intravenous drugs, and a year later was dealing with legal issues resulting from her addiction.

“It was really bad,” she says.

Eventually, Johnson says she was court ordered to drug rehab for a stint that lasted 11 months. During this time she turned 17, earned enough credits to become a high school graduate, and turned things around, she says, “as long as someone was there to give me that guidance.”

But things didn’t stay that way and someone wasn’t always there.

“Getting clean and sober, it wasn’t part of my plan,” she says.

Another arrest—one of several over a span of a few years—resulted in her returning to rehab. But something was different this time. She was enrolled into a faith-based program that she says instilled her with a sense of worth and faith not only in a higher power, but in herself.

“It started changing me little by little,” she says.

And work was one of those changes. Johnson began thinking about a career. A nurse practitioner at the rehab center mentioned KCEOC JobSight’s Opportunity Youth program in Barbourville and thought maybe it could help Johnson land a job. It was something that sounded, at first, too good to be true, she says.

Opportunity Youth is an initiative of the Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program (EKCEP) and offers a community-based approach to assist youth who have been involved in the criminal justice system get employed and begin a path to a self-sustaining career. Through the KCEOC JobSight, Johnson met with Keith Greene, an expert career advisor who helped her fashion a résumé and connect her with soft skills training to prepare her for interviews and increase her employability. Greene later connected her with a paid work experience at a local rehab facility, with the KCEOC JobSight covering Johnson’s wages for the duration of the placement.

Since then, Greene has maintained contact with Johnson and continued to provide career guidance and support. And Johnson says while she was initially unaware that career services like those at KCEOC were available, she credits the work Greene did with helping her step onto a path that has since led to a second job and now college.

“He was super patient,” Johnson says. “He was kind and genuine, and it wasn’t like a job for him. It wasn’t like I was a number or name. He really took the time to get know me and help me, and I’m eternally thankful for that.”

Looking back now, Johnson says, is akin to looking through someone else’s eyes. She’s living a different lifestyle now. She’s a college student with a plan for her future. And she says she’s thankful for the role that Greene and Opportunity Youth played in helping her reach the point where she’s at. It’s something that she would recommend for anyone else who may find themselves in a similar position.

To learn more about Opportunity Youth, visit ekcep.org/youth.

Visit KCEOC Kentucky Career Center JobSight on Facebook at facebook.com/KCEOCKYCareerCenter.

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.