About Assisting Families of Inmates
When someone goes to prison, their family often begins serving a sentence of its own. Children grow up with a parent missing from everyday life. Spouses try to hold relationships together across hundreds of miles. Parents worry about sons and daughters they can rarely see. Since 1978, Assisting Families of Inmates has worked to keep those relationships from disappearing. Based in Virginia, AFOI helps families stay meaningfully connected with incarcerated loved ones while supporting them through the challenges incarceration creates at home.
It Started With the Distance
AFOI began with a remarkably practical problem.
Many Virginia prisons were located in rural areas without public transportation. For lower-income families in Richmond, having a loved one incarcerated could make visiting them nearly impossible.
Thomas A. Edmonds of Second Presbyterian Church recognized the problem.
Drawing from previous volunteer experience with a similar organization in Florida, he encouraged other churches to help provide transportation for Richmond-area families.
In 1978, that volunteer effort became AFOI.
The original idea was simple: incarceration had already separated families emotionally and physically. Transportation shouldn't create another unnecessary barrier between them.
More than four decades later, keeping families connected remains at the center of the organization.
A Visit Can Mean More Than It Seems
For most families, sitting together and talking doesn't sound extraordinary.
Prison changes that.
A visit can give a child time with an incarcerated parent. It can reassure a mother who hasn't seen her son. It can allow spouses to talk about what's happening at home and think about the future together.
AFOI helps make those moments possible through transportation and video visitation.
Its transportation services connect families with correctional facilities that would otherwise be difficult to reach.
Technology has expanded that access even further.
Families can now participate in video visits from home or from AFOI visitor centers located across Virginia.
The method has changed considerably since buses first began carrying Richmond families to prisons.
The purpose hasn't.
Keep the relationship alive.
Supporting the Family Outside the Prison
AFOI also recognizes that incarceration doesn't only affect the person behind the wall.
Life continues outside it.
Bills still arrive.
Children still need support.
Family members may experience stress or isolation while trying to navigate a correctional system they don't fully understand.
AFOI's family support groups give people somewhere to talk openly with others who understand that experience.
Its educational seminars help families navigate issues that affect them throughout incarceration.
The organization also provides assistance designed around the challenges families encounter before and after their loved one returns home.
The family isn't treated as an afterthought to incarceration.
They're part of the story too.
Helping Children Stay Connected
For a child, having an incarcerated parent can be especially confusing.
They may not understand why their parent is gone.
They can experience emotions they don't know how to explain while feeling different from classmates whose families aren't dealing with incarceration.
AFOI creates services specifically with those children in mind.
Its Milk and Cookies Children's Program supports elementary-aged children in Richmond who have an incarcerated loved one.
Other initiatives create environments where children can maintain meaningful connections with incarcerated parents.
The goal isn't to pretend incarceration hasn't happened.
It's to make sure a child doesn't lose an important relationship simply because navigating that relationship has become difficult.
Connection Can Be Part of Reentry
Eventually, most incarcerated people return home.
What they return to matters.
Someone who has maintained healthy relationships during incarceration may come back to a family that still knows them and is prepared to support their transition.
AFOI sees visitation as part of that larger picture.
Research cited by the organization connects regular supportive visitation with better outcomes after release and lower rates of reincarceration.
That means helping a child see their parent isn't only meaningful in the moment.
Maintaining family relationships can become part of preparing for life after prison.
AFOI therefore connects its family-centered mission with something that affects the entire community:
Public safety.
Keeping Families From Becoming Invisible
Correctional systems naturally focus on the person who has been incarcerated.
AFOI looks at the people standing outside the gate too.
The mother trying to arrange a visit.
The spouse carrying responsibilities at home.
The child who still wants a relationship with their parent.
Those families didn't commit the offense, but incarceration can reshape their lives nonetheless.
AFOI exists to make sure they aren't forgotten in the process.
What began as a church-led transportation effort in Richmond has developed into a broader organization helping families navigate visitation and maintain relationships through periods of incarceration and reentry.
The programs have grown.
The underlying idea remains remarkably human.
Sometimes helping someone move forward begins by making sure the people who love them can stay close.
At the heart of Assisting Families of Inmates is the belief that incarceration shouldn't unnecessarily destroy family relationships. By removing barriers that separate incarcerated people from their loved ones and supporting families through the challenges surrounding incarceration, AFOI helps preserve connections that can bring stability to children, hope to families, and a stronger foundation for the day someone finally comes home.
