What it does
The organization serves families of the incarcerated with evidence-based programs providing meaningful visitation, family support, and children's services.
Afoi's visitation services include our transportation programs, in cooperation with vadjj and vadoc, which include coordinated transportation and incidental services for visitation by familities and friends of juvenile residents and adult inmates confined in correctional institutions in virginia. Adoi's visitation services also include our video visitation program, in cooperation with vadoc, which provides a low-cost alternative (no travel, lodging, time-off-work, childcare, meal expenses, etc.) to face-to-face in-person visits for family and friends with an incarcerated loved one. Video visitation also allows for reduction in personnel and security risks necessary for facilities to accomplish visits including contraband and inmate movement, etc. Afoi currently provides video visitation opportunities to all of virginia's adult correctional centers either remotely from homes worldwide or from one of our visitor centers located throughout the commonwealth (alexandria, bristol, charlottesville, fredericksburg, mechanicsville, norfolk, richmond, and roanoke). Afoi also offers visitation assistance funds for families which van help subsidize the costs associated with prison visitng, either in-person or via video.
Afoi's children's services include our milk & cookies (mac) children's program and its continued development and expansion. Mac provides school- based support group programming to children, grades k-5, who have an incarcerated parent, with the purpose of increasing self-competency, emotional regulation, resiliency, and other factors within program participants. As emotional dysregulation decreases, children are then better able to achieve socially, emotionally, physically, and academically. The mac program also provides support and assistance opportunities for the parents/caregivers of these children in order to reduce household needs/stressors and boost the home environment for all. Mac has continued to expand within rps elementary schools and adoi has continued our work on activity and curriculum updates, program development, and evaluation and program virtualization.
Afoi's family services include direct support for families impacted by the incarceration of a loved one. Afoi also partners with vadjj to offer our hearty support for justice-involved youth (youth either reentering our communities from incarceration or youth on probation and parole within our communities) and their families. Afoi also offers holiday assistance to impacted children and families; support through direct services like our family support group and seminar serires; and direct work in cooperation with vadoc to open and operate the family reunification program for incarcerated parents (mothers), and their children/families, as the parent nears the end of their sentence and reenters their home and community. Afoi currently offers the family reunification program at the virginia correctional center for women (vccw) in goochland, virginia.