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.

Pivot Legal Society and West Coast Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (West Coast LEAF) filed a complaint regarding the current provincial shelter allowance policy with the B.C. Ombudsperson on May 12.

Parents lose part of their shelter allowance once their kids are put into temporary care. The Ministry of Housing and Social Development (MHSD) cuts it off immediately, or at the end of three months, depending on the discretion of social workers assigned to the case.

Pivot and West Coast LEAF say that the allowance reduction may cause parents to lose their current housing, or end up in a home that may not be suitable for children.

According to Lobat Sadrehashemi, a staff lawyer with Pivot, the current policy contradicts the work of the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD), which is charged with helping parents safely receive their children back from temporary care.

"These aren't situations where the child is in permanent care, where the goal is no longer to have the child returned," said Sadrehashemi. "These are all cases where the ministry is working actively with the parent to have the child returned to the parent, but at the same time, the MHSD is cutting the shelter costs for that parent, making it difficult for them to maintain their housing."

While some parents are granted a three month extension of the shelter allowance, Sadrehashemi says that is not enough time for the issues regarding a child's removal to be resolved.

"There are countless delays in the child welfare system," Sadrehashemi said. "Delays that have nothing to do with the parent, like court scheduling, wait list for programs, huge case loads for social workers. All this makes it really unlikely that kids would be returned in three months."

The legal groups say they have been petitioning the MHSD for two years to extend the allowances. In February 2009, the ministry responded that it is "conducting research on this matter", but has not been in contact since.

"What ministry would know better than any other ministry how difficult it is to find housing for anyone once their housing is lost, especially a single mother on income assistance?" said Liza McDowell of the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre.

"If we know, as advocates, that it takes a year to two to three years to find families housing as it is now, then we're creating this climate of keeping children in temporary care, because they cannot be returned to the mother without adequate housing."

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

At a time when social workers are 'beleaguered by funding cuts and huge caseloads', the legal groups say that family reunification should be the government's priority.

"This is a really narrow issue, it's really simple to resolve," says Sadrehashemi. "But fixing it means it will have a huge impact in ensuring that children get back to a safe home as soon as possible."

Robyn Smith is completing a practicum at The Tyee.