by Stephanie Jeffcoat, AOUON member • Published May 2025
This story was first published by The Imprint, an independent, nonprofit daily news publication dedicated to covering child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health and educational issues faced by vulnerable children and families.
When we talk about incarceration, we often talk about a length of time—how many months or years someone gets, when they’ll be released. What we don’t talk about enough is the cost of that time: the lost relationships, the missed milestones in our families’ lives, and for parents like me, the bond with our children.
In California, there is legislation on the table—AB 1195, introduced by Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva—that would address that last part. According to the author, “When a parent is incarcerated, a child should not be punished with separation. California law recognizes the importance of the parent-child bond, but too often bureaucratic obstacles and a lack of coordination prevent meaningful visitation. AB 1195 ensures that county jails and child welfare agencies uphold the rights of incarcerated parents by requiring regular, in-person visits, unless a court finds, with clear and convincing evidence, that it would harm the child. This bill is about stability, reunification, and building stronger parent-child relationships.”
I support this as someone who knows what it feels like to lose access to your child, not by court order—but by silence, inaction, and a system that failed to act.
Before I was incarcerated, I had court-ordered visitation with my daughter. I showed up for every visit. I held her, played with her, sang to her, and tried my best to show the system I was fighting for her.
But the moment I entered a county jail, everything stopped. No one notified me of scheduled visit dates with my daughter. And every missed visit was used against me—as if I had simply chosen to disappear. But I didn’t disappear. I was in a cell, powerless to reach my child.
My daughter was only 18 months old when she was adopted during my six-month sentence. Six months. That was all it took to permanently sever a bond I had worked so hard to maintain. Not because I posed a danger, and not because a judge said I shouldn’t be in her life—but because the people responsible for ensuring those visits happened failed to do so. And the system let that failure stand.
AB 1195 seeks to fix that. It ensures that when an incarcerated parent has court-ordered visits, they happen. It requires communication between child welfare agencies and jails. It demands documentation of missed visits and real efforts to keep the parent-child relationship intact. It’s not a promise of reunification—it’s a promise of fairness.
This bill is about more than visitation. It’s about protecting the possibility of healing and reconnection. It’s about ensuring parents who are trying to do the right thing aren’t erased by the very institutions meant to support families.
We say we value family, but our systems often act in ways that destroy them—quietly, bureaucratically, and without accountability.
AB 1195 gives parents a fighting chance. It gives children the right to know their parents didn’t abandon them—they were just locked out of the process. It gives courts the clarity they need, based on accurate records—not assumptions.
This bill won’t bring my daughter back. But it can stop this from happening to someone else. And that’s why I’m speaking up.
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