For Basil Talib, coming to Samara was like meeting “relatives I never knew I had.”
“When you get there, it’s like a holiday,” said Talib, of Harrisburg, who started attending Samara’s intensive parenting sessions in Harrisburg six years ago. “Everyone is so cheerful. They don’t judge you. They’ve been like a family.”
Samara: The Center for Individual and Family Growth is a nonprofit agency in Harrisburg founded in 2008 by Executive Director Pamela Haddad, a former child protective services worker in Lehigh County.
Clients are referred to Samara through the Dauphin County child welfare system, court and probation systems, other non-profit agencies and the community. A separate therapeutic visitation program assists families of children placed outside of the home through the Dauphin County welfare system.
“Our families have experienced a tremendous amount of trauma,” explained Haddad. “We work with parents who have come through foster families or intact families with trauma. Our goal with parents is to form safe, respectful relationships.”
In other words, Samara is a therapeutic base for parents who are having difficulty parenting, as well as their children. Often, it’s a carry-over situation caused by a lack of nurturing in the parents’ own childhoods.
Cathy Bacon was referred to Samara’s therapeutic visitation program in 2015 after her youngest child, then 3, was placed in foster care. She and her son met up in Samara’s homelike setting, where she utilized skills learned in Samara’s intensive parenting program. Bacon said her mother gave her “a work history and love” while she was growing up, but her father wasn’t around.
“Samara helped keep you calm and taught you parenting skills,” Bacon noted.
Bacon’s young son was returned to her home 18 months later, but she continues attending the center’s parenting groups today.
“I like Samara,” she said. “It’s comfortable and friendly.”
Harder Time
Haddad’s extensive field experience includes a stint as a parent educator/project coordinator for Cobys Family Services in Lancaster County from 1996 to 2001. During this time, she conducted a parenting course for community parents, foster parents and court-mandated parents referred by Lancaster County Children and Youth.
“When I was doing child investigations, I never met parents who didn’t love their children, but they didn’t know how to heal their families,” Haddad observed. “In 1996, when I was working in Lancaster County, I wrote a curriculum to help parents walk through their childhood.”
At that time, Haddad developed what would become a pilot program for Samara in collaboration with her mother, Jean Heigel. Heigel, her daughter’s mentor, worked for many years with foster children and at-risk families in Lancaster County, all while researching and writing volumes of curricula and teaching materials in the field.
“I found that lots of kids from foster homes were physically or sexually abused or bounced around 20 times to different homes,” Haddad noted. “If the kids don’t behave, some parents will return them. People who go through the system like that have a much harder time parenting their own children.”
Samara’s intensive parenting sessions includes a nurturing activity in which participants take turns giving each other compliments.
“Some people cry because they never heard nice things said about them before,” Haddad recounted.
Safe Haven
Talib lost his mother when he was 5, leaving him with a “dictator” father “who was never a role model,” he recalled.
He felt even more alone after his sister died early in life of natural causes.
“I grew up rough in Brooklyn,” he said. “I came fresh off the streets into a negative environment.”
He won’t say when or how much time he spent in prison because he doesn’t want to “try to think negative and put dates on it.”
Instead, he focuses on how being in prison renewed his appreciation of life. Becoming a father also caused Talib to reevaluate his priorities.
“When I had my kids, I started to man up,” he said. “I started to understand more about God.”
Today, Talib is a single father of two boys, ages 6 and 7, “doing it by myself.” He’s attended almost every parent session at Samara for the past six years, bringing his boys along for children’s sessions. He’s also a published poet, a literary advocate and a self-described activist, receiving the MLK Drum Major Award, a service award, from President Barack Obama in 2016.
“Samara has been like a safe haven for me,” Talib reflected. “It’s a positive attitude. Not only do I learn there, I teach. I give back because I know what it’s like not to have a mother and father. You can’t spell community without unity.”
Olivia Moore also started attending Samara’s intensive parent classes six years ago after voluntarily reaching out to Dauphin County Children and Youth for help with her son’s truancy issues. Although Samara no longer offered the truancy classes recommended by the county agency, Moore discovered much more there.
“I said, ‘Wow, is there anything else there?’” she said. “I went to the intensive parenting classes and never stopped going. You learn something new every time there.”
In fact, Moore learned so much at Samara that she later pursued leadership training and became a class instructor. Her son, now 19, enrolled in the Job Corps and became a certified auto mechanic.
“Once I took the (Samara) classes, I rebuilt my relationship with my son,” Moore said. “I think it’s about nurturing. Samara is very nurturing. They believe in people. I didn’t have that when I was growing up. My son would have ended up in the judicial system without Samara.”
To learn more about Samara, visit www.samarafamily.org.
