Promoting Employment for Homeless Veterans Webinar 4 Transcript
Welcome to webinar number 4 in the Promoting Employment for Homeless Veterans series of presentations, brought to you by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Veterans’ Employment and Training Service, the National Veterans’ Training Institute, or NVTI, and the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. The information in this program can benefit anyone working with homeless veterans, especially Disabled Veterans Outreach Program Specialists assigned to an American Job Center.
If you are not a Disabled Veterans Outreach Program Specialist, we encourage you to connect with one. You can locate your nearest American Job Center at the CareerOneStop website (at
www.careeronestop.org/localhelp/americanjobcenters/find-american-job-centers.aspx)
Homeless veterans who have been incarcerated may be some of the most challenging clients we assist. In this webinar, we’ll be looking at several of the barriers to employment they face, and at the strategies and resources we and our clients can use to address those barriers.
Finding and keeping a good job is a central element in the quest to achieve reintegration in a community after release from a correctional facility. In addition to enabling clients to afford food, clothes, shelter, transportation, and the other essentials needed to become self-sufficient, a steady job promotes a sense a self-efficacy and a confidence that they can support themselves without resorting to criminal activities.
The right job and the right workplace can also provide clients with a new set of relationships with non-offenders and a new social support system, both of which are protective factors that reduce the likelihood of committing additional crimes.
You may want to stop this video at this point and download the Barrier Checklist by clicking through the Resources link on the Webinar homepage, print it, and refer to it throughout this presentation.
We’ll start by meeting Karl, who learned about our American Job Center, or AJC, while developing his re-entry plan at a nearby state prison. He was released earlier this week, and at the urging of his parole office, he visited our office today.
Karl doesn’t remember too much about the incident one night that led to his assault conviction, and admits that he had begun to drink heavily and was getting into frequent fights in bars or when he was around the group of people he had fallen in with.
He spent nearly three years behind bars, and before that he alternated between drawing unemployment and working as a construction laborer.
Prior to that, he had left the Army with a general discharge several months before his three-year enlistment was scheduled to end. When we asked about his military experience, Karl shrugged, said that he had been in the infantry, and added that when he was arrested, he had been seeing a counselor to work on some issues
The most recent detailed data on incarcerated veterans we have was gathered in 2004, and much has happened since then, including the significant drawdowns of the military as combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were scaled back. Nevertheless, although there will always be exceptions to any assumptions we make, we can make some broad generalizations about our veteran clients who are ex-offenders.
Karl is a little younger than the typical incarcerated veteran in 2004, but he faces many of the challenges confronting ex-offenders.
First, there’s a good chance that formerly incarcerated clients may be struggling to find reliable shelter and contending with mental health issues, troublesome health conditions, and substance use. We discuss resources and approaches for addressing these challenges in webinar 3, and we encourage you to view it and explore the Resource links, if you haven’t already done so.
Homeless ex-offenders are also likely to have difficulty arranging for reliable or affordable transportation, and we discuss ways to help them overcome this barrier and transportation-related resources in Webinar 2.
There’s also a good chance homeless ex-offenders will have to deal with:
· Legal and administrative issues
· The need to address the key concerns employers may have about hiring someone with a criminal record, and
· The need to psychologically transition from prison to a workplace and a neighborhood
These are the three issues we’ll focus on in this webinar.
A side note: If you’ve downloaded the Barrier’s Checklist, you’ll note that it includes all of the issues we’ve covered thus far in this webinar series.
Legal and administrative issues
Depending on how comprehensive the pre-release program in their prison or jail was, some ex-offenders may need assistance acquiring drivers’ licenses or state identification cards, social security cards, other forms of identification, and proof of their veteran status.
Ex-offenders may not be eligible for some federal or state safety net programs, depending on their conviction and the state they live in.
If they were drawing benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs prior to their incarceration, they may be able to restart their VA benefits. The same applies to Social Security Administration benefits, and some veterans may have been receiving both of these benefits before their incarceration.
Recently incarcerated clients may be subject to community supervision or parole, with requirements to check-in with their parole officer on a routine basis and observe curfew or travel restrictions. These can interfere with a client’s ability to work during certain shifts or to pursue promising employment opportunities across state lines.
Another factor complicating our clients’ job searches: depending on the crime for which they were convicted, ex-offenders may be barred from employment in a variety of workplaces, including casinos, banks or financial institutions, security firms, home health care agencies, day care centers, or schools.
The employment, residency, and travel restrictions placed on registered sex offenders can be especially complicated and challenging. We’ve included links to several documents from the Center for Sex Offender Management on our resource page. These documents provide a more detailed look at the restrictions and challenges that your clients might face, and strategies for adapting to these issues.
Finally, some states allow ex-offenders to request that conviction records for certain types of offenses be expunged or sealed. Your state may also provide a process by which clients can seek to obtain certificates of rehabilitation, which can improve their odds when applying for jobs.
Job Search Barriers
One of the central tasks facing formerly incarcerated clients is to anticipate and understand concerns that prospective employers may have about their ex-offender status and address those concerns. They should not head for a job interview until they feel comfortable and confident answering the conviction-related questions employers may ask.
A redemption statement, incorporating the three R’s – Responsibility, Regret, and Redemption – is one way to address employers’ concerns.
In the Responsibility portion of the statement, the client takes ownership for past actions.
For example:
“When I was younger, I made a bad decision.”
“I made some poor choices in the past.”
“A few years ago I did some things I should not have done.”
In the Regret portion, the client briefly expresses regret for past actions and the damage or hurt the actions caused others.
For example:
“I’m not proud of the things I did back then.”
“I’m sorry for the hurt I caused others.”
“I wish I had been more mature and responsible.”
“I realize now my priorities and actions were wrong.”
And Redemption: Since employers will be hiring the person the client is now and will be in the future, rather than the person the client used to be, clients should stress what they have learned or gained from the experience of incarceration, how they have changed and turned their lives around, and their goals and their desire to do their best going forward
Some examples of what clients may have gained while behind bars:
· Education, training, or certifications
· Occupational skills they learned from assigned jobs or responsibilities
· An appreciation for the value of work
· An increased respect for authority and a greater willingness to abide by rules
· Increased self-discipline
· A clearer understanding of their strengths, greater recognition of their shortcomings, and a greater willingness and ability to change problematic behaviors
· Increased resiliency and a stronger capability to deal with stressful or difficult situations
· More patience when faced with problems or frustrating situations
· A greater ability to get along with a wide variety of people
Finally they can describe their goals for the future.
For example:
· “I have a strong desire to make up for lost time by working hard and succeeding in my next job.”
· “The time I spent in jail helped me understand what’s important in life, and I’m determined to do my best going forward and never make those mistakes again.”
We’ve also included links on the Resource page to several other documents from reentry programs around the country that provide excellent examples of redemption statements, conviction letters, and suggested phrases for describing past crimes, as well as guidelines for questions about convictions on application forms.
Reality checks
Depending on the skills they possess, their work history, and the nature of their convictions, it may be important to have conversations with clients about the job market they’re entering.
Some ex-offenders will find that most or all of the positions open to them involve low-skill work and low pay. When this is the case with our clients, we need to help them understand that they may have to start building a new career trajectory from scratch.
We can encourage them to see these jobs as stepping stones to better jobs, and opportunities to acquire more skills, to develop a work track record, and to expand their personal networks.
We’ll discuss the concept of stair step jobs in greater detail in Webinar 7.
All things being equal, it makes sense for clients to target the employers who are open to hiring ex-offenders, and LVERs or AJC employer outreach staff can help identify these companies.
Here are some questions outreach staff can ask when meeting hiring decision makers:
· Do you do background checks? If so, what do you check for?
· Do you ask applicants about felony or misdemeanor convictions?
· Do you have any legal restrictions on hiring people convicted of crimes?
· Are there any specific crimes (such as theft or sex crimes) that would disqualify an applicant?
The mere fact that employers conduct background checks does not automatically mean they will not hire an ex-offender. Some employers, for example, may be concerned about felonies or crimes involving theft, but not misdemeanors or civil offenses.
A side note: the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued guidance for employers related to using arrest and conviction information when making hiring decisions. In no way are we suggesting that your job is to advise employers about the legal rights of your clients, but you might want to share the link to the EEOC guidance we have posted on our resource page with your clients, so they will better understand their employment rights.
In general, employers are more likely to hire ex-offenders if they
• Are small and are run by the owner
• Have a diverse work force
• Experience high turnover
• Hire mostly unskilled workers
• Use temporary agencies
Very small businesses may be especially interested in Work Opportunity Tax Credits and the Federal Bonding Program, which we’ll discuss in more detail in Webinar 7.
Psychological transition
Depending on their work history before they were incarcerated, the length of time they were in prison or jail, and their experience and mindset while inside prison, ex-offenders may need to adjust their attitudes, their planning and decision making processes, and their modes of communicating and interacting with others. Some of the habits and beliefs that may have been entirely appropriate, and even necessary, while they were incarcerated can interfere with their ability to thrive on the outside and in the workplace.
Connecting clients with ex-offender support groups can assist them with this transition process and provide them with new points of reference. Local parole officers are likely to know about the non-profit agencies and faith-based groups that sponsor these programs, and about options for individual counseling.
We can have conversations about our clients’ experiences in boot camp or basic training, draw analogies with the psychological transitions they had to make after enlisting in the military, and remind them that they have successfully navigated a similar transition process in the past.
The Grow It model we introduced in Webinar 2 and the Barrier Checklist are designed to support the psychological transition by encouraging clients to take progressively more responsibility and initiative as they become more confident in their ability to progress toward their goals, and more knowledgeable about the strategies and resources they can utilize to move forward.
These tools provide clients with a structured way to reflect on past successes, to consider the kind of life they want to live, to establish goals that will move them in that direction, to candidly assess their current reality, to identify and evaluate their options for moving forward, to select the options that seem most viable for them, and to make, implement, and revise action plans.
Let’s see how Karl uses the GROW IT model as a job aid to move forward.
Goals
When we ask him to think about his long-range goals and big-picture aspirations, here are two he comes up with:
· Put the past behind me, get a fresh start, and make up for lost time
· Have a normal life, get a place of my own to live, have a girlfriend, maybe get married someday
Then we encourage him to think about shorter term goals that would contribute to his long- range goals. We also explain that using the SMART acronym—standing for Specific, Measurable, Aligned, Realistic, and Time-bound—helps us develop more practical and tangible goals.
These are a few of the shorter term goals Karl writes down:
- Within two weeks, ride the entire length of the two bus routes on the west side of town and make a list of the businesses I pass that I’ll visit, drop off my resume, and ask if they might be hiring in the coming month.
- Get my drivers’ license reinstated by the end of the month.
- Attend a meeting at the four local VFW and American Legion posts this month to get a feel for whether I’d like to join them, to learn about the assistance they might be able to provide me, and to let them know that I’m looking for a job.
Reality