The Social Workers came to day with a report on my daughter. In passing they asked us if we could take my son back. We explained that we couldn't live with the intimidation again. He has crossed so many boundaries. His being here would just not work simply because he doesn't want to be here and has made it clear that the reason for his behaviour was to get taken away, or for us to throw him out so he's not going to engage with any re-integration. This, the social worker agreed with.

(We have tried to get him help, that's why we called Social Services in the first place. Even they say they can't do anything unless he engages.)

That in itself was not an easy thing to say. I think he really is passed what I and my wife can give him. He, and his sister, has always had difficulties with anger and other issues, and it has been a struggle to deal with them. We have managed but this latest trouble has been too much for us both.

He's fifteen so next year he can legally leave anyway. This is something he has been wanting. Some of the new friends (which school thought where a big factor in his problems, more on that later) he has taken up with all left home at sixteen and have been given flats (which are paid by the state), and given money, which he thought was great.

We have taken on two children who have had problems due to their upbringing. We were told they would have problems quite possibly into adulthood. We have always sought help for their problems from Social Services. We have even had to convince Social Services and School that there were problems so that they could get the help, often time unsuccessfully.

Now they are using those very problems as evidence that my daughter is not having a supportive and happy home environment (this despite during all our contact with Social Services, they have had nothing but praise for our parenting).

Yet if we say that we could have our Son back, despite his continued problems, they would both be able to live with us. Go figure.

Social services say that they need to live together because they are siblings, yet at the same time they do not feel the need to set up any contact arrangements for them because they both feel they see enough of each other at school.

When I asked what support and advice we could be given with regard how to deal with this situation she just told us not to say anything to her. I said what about support for us in how to deal with this, she said, quite snottily, "well if you think you will have difficulty dealing with this emotionally go and see your psychiatrist". I told that any parent would have difficulty dealing with the fact that one of the children was being taken away from them.

She said that they weren't taking her away from us, this was a consequence of us not taking my son back.

When I said that I felt we had not been given any support she said that I had a psychiatrist. I said yes, I didn't get that until I had a nervous breakdown, and that help was nothing to do with support for our family situation. Basically all the psychiatrist did was give me tablets.

I said I would explain more about his new friends. We live outside of the town, so his school friends are from the locality, not from town itself. The new friends, which have been a big cause of his problems, are from the town. His foster carers have been letting him go into town for two or three hours before going home to them. The school asked if he could be picked up from school to avoid him seeing these friends from town as they believed this was a big source of his problems. The social workers said they couldn't force their values on him. They also wanted the school not to put sanctions on him for any of the things he did, which included not turning up to school, walking out of lessons, swearing at teachers. School said they would put sanctions on him and told us they felt that social services where too child centred and were undermining them.

While my son was living with us he would disappear and was staying over at a 17-year-old's house and sleeping with her. The social worker told him this wasn't a problem. When came to him disappearing he was told it was OK so long as he told us when he would be back, so he would waltz off on a Friday, informing us he would be back Sunday night, but would not tell us were he was going. We were just totally undermined.

After their visit I called the social worker to ask how we should handle things with my daughter. She says not to say anything, as she didn't know if it was going to happen because we may change our minds about having my some back. I told her that we had thought about enough about that and were sure about our decision. It wasn't something we had taken lightly.

She said that she would ask my daughter what she wanted to do. If she said that she did not want to live with us anymore then that is what would happen.

Of course my son has told my daughter that he gets paid fiver pounds a day to go to school, another fiver for going to church and gets to hang in town after school everyday.

The social worker was quite clear not to mention any of this to our daughter as yet.

We decided we did need to talk to our daughter about this, to explain what they were going to ask her, that they would check out my ex wife to see if she was suitable to have them etc. We explained quite clearly that we did not want her to leave and explained what the social worker was going to ask her.

Our daughter then told us that she already knew all this, that the social worker had spoken to her about it before she'd spoken to us, but had told her that 'it was confidential' and not to say what they spoke about.

We asked her what she wanted. She said it wasn't that she didn't want to live with us, but she wanted to be with her brother. She emphasised this a couple of times.

One of the care workers we dealt with last year regarding our children warned us not to involve Social Services; that 'they would take our life apart'. We thought she was being melodramatic. She was right. We thought they would help us but they have just ripped us to pieces.