BC Council for Families

Parents whose children are taken into temporary care may be denied the essential housing allowance needed to provide shelter for their family, say two Vancouver-based legal groups.

On May 12, Pivot Legal Society and West Coast Women's Legal Education and Action Fund filed a complaint about the shelter allowance policy with the B.C. Ombudsperson, alleging that the policy unfairly impacts poor families.

Between 2003 and 2008, 35% of children taken into provincial care involved families receiving income assistance. Of these, the vast majority are Aboriginal or single mother families.

Current Ministry of Housing and Social Development policy reduces a parent's monthly shelter allowance when their children are in the temporary care of the Ministry of Children and Family Development. This means that a parent may lose their housing or be forced into housing that may not be suitable for the return of their children from care.

"On the one hand, when a child is taken into care, MCFD social workers are charged with returning children safely to their parents as soon as possible. On the other hand, the welfare system makes that impossible by taking away the housing that is necessary for the child to return to their parents. " says Lobat Sadrehashemi, staff lawyer at Pivot. "These two systems are working directly against each other, and it hurts the most vulnerable families."