Background: Having children diagnosed with cancer is a stressful condition for parents, facing physical, psychosocial, and financial burdens in life. These problems parents face are frequently neglected by health care providers and people around them when in reality parents play a significant role in caregiving children with cancer.
Purpose: To identify the top rank of unmet supportive care needs, the prevalence of psychological distress, and the correlation of unmet supportive care needs and psychological distress among parents of children with cancer in Indonesia.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 100 parents of children with cancer from pediatric ward of two public hospitals in Central and East Java, Indonesia. This study chose the Supportive Care Needs Survey for Partner and Caregiver (SCNS-P&C45) Indonesian version to measure unmet supportive care needs, and Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale (HADS) Indonesian version to assessed psychological distress including anxiety and depression.
Results: Of the 100 parents surveyed, 83% had more than ten unmet needs, 49% encountered anxiety, and 25% had depression. The highest need for supportive care was information needs (66.68±23.07). Anxiety not only correlated with the total score of needs (p<.001; r=.351) but also each domain of needs including informational, health care service, psychological, work, and social needs.
Conclusion and recommendation: Most common needs among parents of children with cancer were informational needs. Anxiety is strongly correlated to unmet supportive care needs. We recommend health care providers to activate support groups to decrease parents’ anxiety and depression. There is also a necessity to increase parental education to fulfill their needs of information.

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