“I felt very scared of the officers,” says 10-year-old Jack, about visiting his mother, Amy, in jail for the first time. “And I didn’t think my mum would do this, so I was kind of sad.”

Today the two play Twister at Sydney’s Dillwynia correctional centre, where Amy is nearing the end of an 18-month non-parole period for fraud. They collapse in a giggling embrace of long limbs and prison greens.

Twelve-year-old sister Emma watches on. She wants to tell Amy about the primary school graduation ceremony that she missed the day before. “It’s very intense,” she says, of having a parent in prison. “Like, why do you have to go through security to see your mum? They think you’re carrying drugs. They can’t trust you. It’s annoying.”

A mother hugs her kids at Dillwynia correctional centre. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

Later, during a family game of Jenga, brother Dylan, 13, gently chides his mother for pulling on a block that will obviously destabilise the whole stack.

“It’s harder for them than it is for me,” Amy, 32, tells Guardian Australia. “I’m the one who made the actions to get the consequence – and they’re living it.”

Prison visits don’t normally look like this. Today is a child and parent day organised by Shine for Kids, a non-government organisation that supports children who have a parent in jail. There’s craft, games and food that the inmates have made in the prison kitchen. It’s the first time many of them have cooked for their kids in months.

Shine receives funding from Corrective Services NSW for just two child and parent days each year and the next one – which was to be held at Easter – has been cancelled because of coronavirus.

A child paints icing on a gingerbread man, one of the activities for kids while visiting their mothers in prison. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

Dillwynia is a medium security jail an hour north-west of Sydney. On the day we visit, it is shrouded in smoke from nearby bushfires. In the visitors’ room there’s a set of plastic play equipment and a handful of low tables with small chairs around them.

A four-year-old girl runs in and wraps her arms around her mother’s legs. They linger in an embrace. Her two-year-old sister, wearing a sparkly T-shirt and a bouncy ponytail of curls, is less fussed. She submits to a quick hug then heads straight for the slide.

A small boy with a huge grin leaps into his mother’s arms. She’s not much older than a kid herself, with her hair in braids. Later he tells her that he has “two mummies” – her and his grandmother, who he now lives with. “No, I’m your mum,” she says.

A three-month-old baby, visiting her mother with two older siblings, sleeps in her carer’s arms.

A child visits his mother in jail with his grandmother. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

Sixteen-year-old Sophie and her mother, Gail, also doing time for fraud, sit locked in deep conversation.

“This is the first time since I got here [last] January that I’ve had this time just with her,” Gail, 46, says. Children have to be escorted by an adult into prisons in NSW so normally Sophie’s dad, Gail’s ex-partner, will accompany her.

“I appreciate it so much – to have my daughter uninterrupted for four hours. We can just talk, laugh, cry. And the officers are letting us. They’re not hovering over us.”

Gail says she deserves to do time for her crime: she stole money to support a drug habit and got six years.

“I wasn’t coping a lot on the outside so I used drugs to block out all the pain of my childhood,” which was characterised by “a lot of abuse: physical, sexual and emotional”.

“I’ve done programs to address my offending behaviours and I’ll keep my promise to you, Soph, that this is the one and only time,” she says.

Sophie nods, her eyes welling up. “Obviously it was hard at the start but it’s getting easier,” she says. “But yeah, it’s still hard.”

Shine For Kids facilitates visits for kids to see their mothers at Dillwynia correctional centre. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

“We would say that children serve a silent sentence when their mother goes to jail,” says Kelly-Anne Stewart, principal adviser, women offenders, for Corrective Services NSW. “Research tells us that children who have a parent in custody certainly suffer a range of ... psychosocial and emotional issues.”

And there are long-term consequences, too. Kids with a parent in jail are four to six times more likely to end up in jail. They are 40% more likely to drop out of school.

A mother cuddles her three-month-old baby who is at the prison for a rare visit. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

Life for mothers and young babies separated by prison is particularly difficult, says Stewart. “Anyone who’s had a baby would know the bond, and that bonding time, is very important.”

There’s only one correctional facility in New South Wales that allows women to keep their preschool-aged children with them, but there are limited places and strict conditions. Not everyone qualifies.

About 70% of the 1,000 women in custody in NSW are parents; 40% of those detained women are on remand – that is, they are awaiting trial and have not been found guilty by a court, a percentage that Stewart admits is “incredibly high”.

Being on remand is very stressful, she says. “You don’t know when you’re getting out … If you don’t have someone to step in, your children might go into emergency foster care.”

The average time for an inmate to be on remand in NSW is 48 days. “That’s just long enough to cause some serious problems in your life,” says Stewart. And yet a large proportion of women held on remand will not end up getting a custodial sentence.

Inside Dillwynia correctional centre in north-west Sydney. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

Danielle Fender, service and programs officer at Dillwynia, has done the hard work of fostering relationships with caseworkers to convince custodial carers to participate in today.

“[The carers] don’t have to bring [the kids] in if they don’t want to, and that’s where it can get nasty,” she says. “There were some people who applied and the family were like, nope, we’re not bringing them.

“Other people are scared about bringing them into this environment.”

For inmates like Amy and Gail, outside of days like today it’s six-minute phone calls in the morning before school and – before they were suspended by the national cabinet because of coronavirus – supervised visits of one to two hours every few weeks, depending on security clearance.

“We’re usually in white overalls, zip-tied up the back, so it’s confronting for the children,” says Amy. “We’ve got to sit in a certain spot. The inmate can’t get up and move around.”

A prison guard watches over mothers as they play and catch up with their children. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

Shine for Kids advocates for prison to be a last resort for primary caregivers who are convicted of non-violent crimes, and coronavirus has made that more urgent than ever, says the organisation’s national programs manager, April Long.

“The risk of Covid-19 to this population is extremely high,” she says. “There are community alternatives to incarceration.”

Long supports the suspension of visits to prisons during the pandemic, but has called for video conferencing and free phone calls to be made available “for parents in custody to remain connected with their children during this time”.

A child and mother approach the prison guards’ desk. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

Long knows the stigma and shame of losing a parent to jail. It wasn’t until she was 30 that she felt able to talk about the fact that her dad had been incarcerated during her childhood, and the impact it had.

“It’s really challenging, because you’ve got that grief and loss – it is considered an adverse childhood experience – [but] different from divorce or the death of a parent, you’re not encouraged to talk about it.

“No one brings you a casserole or rallies around you when a parent goes to prison.

“There are about 75,000 children in Australia right now with a parent in prison,” says Long. “That’s a lot of children who, if we don’t support them now, are at risk of lifelong risk factors including incarceration themselves. The research shows us that.

“The thing that we need to remember is that a lot of these women have [also] been the victims of crime.

“A lot of them have been victims of childhood sexual abuse, the vast majority [of women in jail] have been victims of family and domestic violence. I think we have to look at ourselves as a society and [ask]: how have we failed these women?”

Cards with positive messages have been placed on the floor in a heart shape by Shine For Kids staff. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

Sophie will be at least 19 when her mother gets out of jail.

“I came in here with her as a 15-year-old,” says Gail, “and I’m going to go out with her picking me up.

“You’re going to pick me up, yeah?” she says, turning to her daughter, a mix of hope and fear on her face.

Her daughter attempts a smile and nods. “Yeah, I will.”

* Names have been changed to protect the identity of inmates’ children.