Partner support for men

Hi all,

We've been asked to set up an online Partner Support Group for men, with a particular focus on the issues faced by men who are partners of women diagnosed with breast cancer.

As I see it, we have a couple of choices, and as all of the partners in this group are men, I wanted to ask you what your preference would be.

The first option would be to direct male partners to an existing group in the online network that is inclusive of all men (without restrictions on age, location, or partner diagnosis) and I think Shane's 'For the boys' group might fit that criteria (Shane, could you confirm if that's the case and whether you'd be happy with that?).  The second option would be to set up a new online partner support group from scratch.

Some things to keep in mind are whether the new online group should be public or private (considering that for many men, their partner with breast cancer may also be a participating in the online network), whether the group should be restricted to partners only, who the facilitators might be.

Apologies in advance for the short timeframe, but could you give me your preference (if you have one) by the end of the day?  We're trying to get something in place for the Adelaide forum at the end of this week, which has 450 people registered, a large proportion of whom are partners.

One last thing, if you're wondering, we will also work to set up a separate group for female partners that can focus on their issues.

(FYI, for the purposes of this discussion, I've temporarily made this group private, and will delete this conversation when we're done, as I don't have the functionality to make just this conversation private).

ETA: Edited to clarify that I'm referring to an online partner support group for men. ~Di