Thatcher Brook Center — Enriching Abilities Since 1991
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Our Mission

Assisting individuals to maximize the quality of their day — every day.

Participants at Thatcher Brook Center

At Thatcher Brook Center, we find no greater purpose than assisting individuals who have come to us seeking excellence in service delivery — the opportunity to maximize the quality of their day. We ensure our success by the quantifiable progress on personal goals, and by the smiles we see at the start and end of each day.

Our fundamental guide is fostering individual health by teaching the tenets of good mental and physical wellbeing — through growing, understanding and eating whole foods, learning natural strategies to decrease anxiety such as physical exercise, and the modeling of healthy living by our staff.

We strive to ensure that a day for people who join us here should be as fulfilling as what we would hope for our own personal lives. It is our standard and bar of excellence to grow ourselves every day to better enable this to occur.

What We Offer

Programs built around the whole person.

Each of our programs is designed to meet participants where they are — building skills, confidence, and community through purposeful daily engagement.

Our community-based adult day program — offered both morning and afternoon — is committed to offering the highest quality programming centered on teaching real-life skills and social skills. Clients design their own monthly calendars with a variety of community activities to choose from.

  • Healthy cooking classes & whole foods education
  • Arts & Crafts, Drama Club, Performing Arts
  • Special Olympics participation
  • Book Club & American Sign Language
  • Gardening, Hiking, and Woodworking
  • Dance and much more

Thatcher Brook Center offers high quality Career Planning Services through our Discovering Personal Genius (DPG) program — a personalized approach to identifying an individual's interests, skills, and key vocational themes that help shape a vocational profile and customized job and career development plan.

  • Personalized vocational profile development
  • Identification of three overarching Vocational Themes
  • Clarification of ideal work conditions for success
  • Customized job development and work-site support facilitation
  • Grounded in the Griffin-Hammis DPG methodology

Health and wellbeing are woven into everything we do at Thatcher Brook Center. Our staff model healthy living daily, and participants engage in activities that support both mental and physical flourishing.

  • Whole foods growing, preparation, and nutrition education
  • Physical exercise as a natural anxiety-reduction strategy
  • Staff modeling of healthy lifestyles and positive habits
  • Mental health awareness and emotional regulation support

Agency and self-determination are central to our philosophy. Each month, clients actively co-design their own calendars by selecting from a rotating set of community-based activities — ensuring that programming remains personally meaningful and self-directed.

  • Monthly client-designed activity calendars
  • Community integration outings and local partnerships
  • Rotating activity offerings to maintain engagement
  • Focus on social skill development in real-world settings

Our Standard of Excellence

A day here should be as fulfilling as any other.

We hold ourselves to a single, uncompromising bar: a day at Thatcher Brook Center should offer the same richness, purpose, and joy that we would want for our own lives. That commitment drives us to grow ourselves every single day — so we can better serve the people who trust us with theirs.

Learn our story
"We ensure our success by the quantifiable progress on personal goals — and by the smiles we see at the start and end of each day."
Thatcher Brook Center Team Biddeford, Maine · In service since 1991

From the Center

All updates
Newsletter Spring 2025

Spring Newsletter: New Activities, New Voices

This season's newsletter highlights our newest community activities, participant spotlights, and upcoming Special Olympics preparations.

Read newsletter
Programs Jan 2025

Discovering Personal Genius: A Path to Meaningful Work

Our DPG career planning service helps participants identify their vocational themes and build a customized job development plan grounded in their strengths.

Read more
Community Oct 2024

Gardening, Cooking & Wellness: A Whole-Person Approach

From growing vegetables to learning whole-food cooking, our health programming has become one of the most popular parts of our participants' weekly calendars.

Read more

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