When grief support is designed with families: A leadership journey

Photo courtesy Dr Vinutha Suresh
Psychologist Vinutha Suresh (centre) is a 2025 scholar in the Children’s Palliative Care Leadership Program supported by TWCC and the Hyderabad Centre for Palliative Care.

CHENNAI, INDIA – At the Cancer Institute, Adyar, a 70-year-old non-profit and one of India's most respected cancer centres, the waiting room at the Pain and Palliative Care out-patient department fills quickly each morning. Every day, dozens of children and adults arrive from across the country seeking treatment and hope. Beyond their medical needs, each one carries a story, a set of fears and a family walking alongside them.

This is where psychologist Vinutha Suresh begins her day. A 2025 scholar in the Children’s Palliative Care Leadership Program, supported by Two Worlds Cancer Collaboration and the Hyderabad Centre for Palliative Care, she is part of a global effort to expand palliative care across South and Southeast Asia.

Her path here was unexpected. Vinutha started her professional life as a software engineer, but when a member of her extended family was diagnosed with mental illness, everything shifted. She discovered her calling and found herself drawn to supporting others through crisis.

"I've found the work I'm truly meant to do," she says – providing emotional and psychological support for adults, children and their families facing life's most challenging moments.

For more than three years, Vinutha has worked at the Cancer Institute, where thousands of people travel from across the country for treatment. She works alongside a small team of doctors, post-grad students, social workers and nurses, conducting psychological and social assessments and advising on therapy and counselling. Even in palliative care situations, "there is always something we can do," she explains, whether it's offering comfort, providing information, or helping to uplift someone's mood.

"When there is no hope for a cure, there is still hope for comfort and care," says Vinutha.

This philosophy feels particularly urgent given the scope of need across India, where more than 1.6 million children require palliative care each year, including 50,000 children newly diagnosed with cancer.

Recognising this reality and her commitment to improving care, Vinutha proposed an ambitious project within the Children’s Palliative Care Leadership Program focused on a clear gap: bereavement support for parents who’ve experienced the loss of a child, with the aim of broadening the reach and quality of services for grieving families across India.

Rather than following Western models, she set out to build a program rooted in local understanding and tailored to language, customs and family needs.

Building from the ground up

Working with bereaved parents and patient advocates as co-creators, Vinutha’s work today has seen the development of a survey, conducted with 15 bereaved parents, to understand what parents most need after loss. What she found was a strong and diverse need for support: 60 per cent wanted emotional support through counseling and support groups, 47 per cent sought practical assistance such as financial, employment and child care support, and 73 per cent emphasized the need for safe spaces for expression and sharing.

Encouragingly, among those who accessed professional help, all found it useful.

Together, says Vinutha, these findings show both the clear demand and the untapped potential for bereavement services in India — parents not only value professional support when they receive it, but also face very real barriers that prevent them from accessing it.

These voices now guide the creation of a bereavement clinic at the Cancer Institute — with structured care plans, culturally sensitive language and guidelines, and memory-making practices.

The program's vision has taken shape through patients like Bhuvanesh, a brave, creative and deeply spiritual young man with cancer who expresses himself through his art. Vinutha and her team have worked with Bhuvanesh and his family to preserve his artwork in a memory book, creating a lasting record of who he is.

"Art itself is a language," Vinutha reflects, noting that through this book, his family will always be able to stay in touch with him and celebrate his life.

For Vinutha, this captures an important lesson: when bereavement support is built with the children and their loved ones as co-creators, solutions emerge that are rooted in culture and uniquely meaningful to each family involved.

Insights gained through her leadership journey:

Leadership begins with listening — the bereaved parents themselves defined what meaningful support looks like through the survey process
"You can't run away from conflict" — whether in team dynamics or sensitive family conversations, conflict must be faced directly
Building the right team is essential — recognising the skills and talents of team members and giving them opportunities to shine
Cultural sensitivity is non-negotiable — any approach must be "very culturally sensitive" rather than adapting external models
Networking and collaboration are vital — these connections drive sustainable change
"At the end of the day, it has to translate to patient care" — whatever leadership skills are developed, the ultimate measure is whether the people you serve are better supported

Once fully tested at the Cancer Institute, Vinutha intends to share her family-led, culturally rooted approach to inform bereavement services across India. Her work is a reminder that leadership in palliative care – and in life – is about walking alongside others with compassion and support. As she reflected in a recent article in eHospice, quoting Ram Dass: “We’re all just walking each other home.”