PENDLETON — One good friend can make all the difference in the world.
For children and adults with special needs, a support system including friendships is crucial to a healthy and prosperous lifestyle.
Blair Patton, 26, of Pendleton has autism. He is not only a former member of Pendleton Heights High School Best Buddies, but when he graduated in 2013, he remained active with the group, helping others there maintain and build friendships.
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As part of the Best Buddies Ambassadors Program, Blair has given speeches around the state about overcoming his personal challenges, including how to deal with bullying. But as he grows, he’s seeking more adult interaction, real friends.
Blair’s mother, Sue Patton, and PHHS teacher Patty Hinton, the school’s Best Buddies sponsor, are doing all they can to help young adults such as Blair develop and maintain friendships as adults.
They’re piloting the Pendleton Citizens Program, a community outreach designed to help special-needs adults cultivate friendships once they’ve graduated high school.
Sue Patton watched her son thrive in the Best Buddies program while in high school. She was worried about his continued social development after graduation and is working with Hinton to organize the program locally.
The Pendleton Citizens Program encourages local adult residents to reach out in friendship to young adults in their community who have special needs.
The program asks for a one-year commitment and will match an adult who has intellectual and developmental disabilities to a peer without disabilities.
The idea is for the buddy pair to develop a friendship and promote a more inclusive world for adults with disabilities.
After months of working with state officials, who have a Citizens Program in Indianapolis — in which Blair is also a member with a man in Noblesville — the Pendleton Citizens Program began as a pilot program in November.
Pendleton’s program has five matches, and organizers would like to see more local residents volunteer to befriend local adults with disabilities.
“It’s growing slowly,” Sue Patton said. “We’re really focusing on friendship.”
The hope is the matches will develop into true friendships that might last longer than the year agreement.
People who take part are matched with adults with whom they might have something in common. They’re asked to meet once or twice a month for a couple of hours.
Organizers want them to do things friends do, Sue Patton said. Whether it’s going to a movie or just texting now and again, the interaction is key.
While Blair is still active in the high school Best Buddies program, helping out, he and others like him also need to develop friendships with adults their age in their own communities, Sue Patton said.
Leaders of Pendleton Community Public Library are helping out with the program and have given Blair a part-time job, three hours a week, working in the garden and stocking their mobile food pantry. Blair loves it, he said, and would love to work more and develop more adult friends.
While he is also part of the Pendleton Kiwanis Club, where he helps out and stays active, there is nothing like having a good friend, a buddy, he said.
Thanks to all Blair’s hard work and drive to succeed as an adult, he was recently given a celebration Challenge Coin by state officials who recognized his hard work to help those with disabilities.
“It makes us feel great about all he has accomplished and how he likes to give back to the community,” Sue Patton said.
Now his goal is to help his mom develop the Pendleton Citizens Program, where he can continue to help others and himself grow in their own community, he said.
