Verna McFelin (second from left) founded Pillars in 1988 after her husband went to prison. She had four children at the time, one of them a baby. For three decades she worked with others in Pillars to meet the needs of thousands of prisoners' families in Christchurch and Auckland. This photograph was taken in 1989 outside the second Pillars centre set up to assist the families of prisoners. McFelin has described how difficult it is to visit family in prison: 'You almost need counselling skills to communicate with a person in a visiting room ... You’re face to face, you can’t walk away. It’s noisy, there are security people walking around listening to you – it’s a completely different environment to being at home.'
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