Some States Using Federal Grant Money to Help People with Addiction Find a Path to Recovery

This piece comes to us courtesy of Stateline. Stateline is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news service of the Pew Charitable Trusts that provides daily reporting and analysis on trends in state policy.

JAMAICA PLAIN, Massachusetts—At 52, Dajaun Alexander says he’s looking for a fresh start. He graduated from a cooking course here last week and has been chosen for a paid apprenticeship. His prospects for a full-time job after that are very good, his chef instructor said.

For Alexander, completing Community Servings’ 12-week course represents a rare achievement in a life punctuated by what he calls “bad decisions.” He is a recovering alcoholic with a history of incarcerations, broken relationships and spotty employment. Cooking, he said, “is my passion.”

It may also be his path to recovery.

The local food preparation facility where Alexander trained is part of a national program known as Access to Recovery (ATR). The voucher program, launched in 2004, aims to help low-income people in recovery restart their lives and avoid relapse.

Eleven states receive ATR grants for services from addiction treatment to what is called recovery support.

Trainee Dajaun Alexander preps pizzas with chef instructor Susan Logozzo in an industrial kitchen at Community Servings in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Career training programs like this have been shown to vastly improve a person’s chances of staying clean and sober. (Amanda Marsden/Community Servings)

“Career training may not be for everyone in recovery, particularly if they don’t have stable housing,” Pressman said. But many people need to get a job right away to pay rent or make court-ordered payments. Allowing people to get paid while they learned new skills helped get more people into the program, she said.

Through its ATR grants, Massachusetts has built an infrastructure of providers like Community Servings who have been trained in how to work with people in recovery. They and others can provide services in the future if the state is able to find funding. Other ATR providers include certified addiction coaches, housing specialists and case managers.

For Alexander, a lanky man with expressive eyes and a timid demeanor, the phone call he got from Community Servings’ training director accepting him into the program may have been the break he needed. “I thanked her a hundred times on the phone and a hundred times more when I met her,” he said.

His eyes welled up when he described the first day of class. “We got a chance to meet the CEO and the executive chef and everyone in the kitchen. Each one talked to us. For me it was inspirational,” he said. In addition to the cooking skills, Alexander said the ATR program has given him “a sense of direction.”

Since he left Boston’s South Bay House of Correction in October, Alexander has been living in a nearby homeless shelter. He’s on several waitlists for subsidized housing. For now, he says his goal is to get a job cooking for the elderly in a nursing home or assisted living facility. “My instructor says I should aim higher. But who’s to say? I could do a job cooking for a little while and I might get recognized as someone who could be an executive chef.”