Three B.C. human rights organizations are urging the province’s political leaders to commit to changing a policy they say is affecting some of the most vulnerable children in the province.

In a letter addressed to Premier Christy Clark, NDP Leader Adrian Dix, Green Party leader Jane Sterk, and B.C. Conservative leader John Cummins, the organizations First Call, Community Legal Assistance Society, and West Coast LEAF are asking for a commitment to end the current clawback of all child-support payments from families on income assistance.

“We think that’s a great inequity, and unfair, and given how low welfare rates are, it really compromises children’s health and well-being to deprive them of that,” Adrienne Montani, provincial coordinator for First Call: B.C. Child and Youth Advocacy Coalition, told the Straight by phone.

She said the regulation undermines the motivation for parents to make child-support payments.

“We’re asking them to commit that if they form government, they would agree to this recommendation as an immediate sort of goodwill gesture and relief effort,” said Montani. “It seems so awful to us that money’s actually paid and children don’t benefit from it at all. It just gets clawed back into government revenues.”

The groups are recommending that a $300 exemption be created for child-support payments received by social assistance recipients. Before a provincial exemption was eliminated in 2002, single parents on income assistance in B.C. were permitted to receive up to $100 a month in child support without an impact on their income assistance.

“As a minimum, let’s make sure that at least $300 each month sticks to those children,” said Montani. “Income assistance rates are so low, and they don’t bring you anywhere close to the poverty line—you’re like 50 percent below the poverty line if you’re on income assistance.”

According to an annual report issued by First Call in 2012, B.C. has the second highest child-poverty rate, after Manitoba.

“We’re hoping that parties will see this as an injustice that’s not a huge cost to the ministry or to government," added Montani. “These are some of the lowest-income children in the province so it’s a gesture we’d like to see them all embrace and commit to should they be elected.”

In their letter to the four political leaders, the groups argue that too many women in B.C. “face the impossible choice” of staying in violent and abusive relationships, or leaving with their children to face poverty.

“Meager social assistance rates place these lone-parent families well below the poverty line, and government policy preventing them from receiving child support helps keep them there,” the letter reads. “This untenable situation must be immediately addressed.”

According to First Call, 119,000 children in B.C. are living in poverty, about 80,000 of which live in Greater Vancouver.