Hoffman Estates day center a new model for Clearbrook’s clients

Clearbrook celebrated its newest community center, offering day program services for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, in Hoffman Estates Monday.

The Clearbrook Day Program Center at 1260 W. Higgins Road represents a transition for Clearbrook to a model focused on smaller locations and more individualized programming, Clearbrook CEO Jessica Smart said.

“In this new model, they learn life skills to foster more independence, form meaningful connections, and experience a sense of belonging, something many of us may often take for granted,” she said.

The center, which serves about 50 people daily, follows a model Clearbrook has established at centers such as one in Rolling Meadows.

It offers a kitchen area, a sensory room with a lava lamp and rope lights, a shower area, an arts and crafts studio and a technology lab with laptops where clients can shop or play video games.

The center serves Clearbrook clients, many of them residents of group homes. They include individuals with autism spectrum disorder, Down syndrome and cerebral palsy.

Barbara Gibson, resident of a group home in Elk Grove Village, said the adults at the center talk with each other, play games, listen to music and create arts and crafts.

“It gives us something to do and somewhere to go. We don't like sitting at home doing nothing,” she said.

Hoffman Estates Mayor Bill McLeod attended along with State Reps. Michelle Mussman and Nabeela Syed.

“Clearbrook has helped so many people throughout the decades, and they continue in their mission of service to people in the communities who really need service who at one time were sort of shunted aside. They now try to incorporate everybody into the community,” McLeod said. “That was the dream of the Americans with Disabilities Act, that everybody be included as an equal partner in the community.”