Bring Dalylah home

Hi, my name is Christine and my boyfriend is Joey. I am 22 years old, Joey is 26. We live in Englewood Colorado where we’ve been raising our 1 1/2 year old son (Oliver) and my 4 year old sister (Dalylah) for the last 2 1/2 years. I had gained custody of my sister in July of 2020 after being placed on a safety plan to watch Dalylahs mother while she cared for her in the home in hopes of a case not being opened. After a few days of continuous illegal activity and confusion I started staying at my grandfathers house two blocks away during the night and would return during the day just to keep peace with her mother and the Social workers. After a threatening call from the mothers lawyer Dalylah was immediately placed in my custody and the case began. I have always wanted to do my best for my siblings as my younger brothers and sisters have all been separated from me. I was immediately ready to do any and everything in my power to care for her and eventually adopt her. As Joey and I Became more serious we moved in together and he has become a very important father figure to Dalylah and loves her as if she was our own Daughter, my grandfather was also very accepting and loving of Dalylah as well before he passed away this recent June. We’ve had continuous visits each month since July of 2020 and parental rights to both parents were terminated, starting our adoption process. Throughout the entirety of the case we have switched caseworkers and multiple other workers on the case numerous times causing lots of confusion and delays over and over again. Figuring out who to call and when or where to turn things in has always been a hassle and they’ve always tried to make me feel as if I am not capable of caring for her, making me feel as if they have been waiting for any minor reason to remove her from my care. The second week of November we had received a call that someone had made a report to CPS that I have been neglecting my children and they would have to come do an evaluation, the information given was false, out of spite for me and extremely harmful to our adoption. After the evaluation the social worker had said she documented everything very well, saw it was definitely a misunderstanding and that there would be no further investigations. At the time we thought it would be best to have our Caseworker with us at the evaluation as she has known us for the last how ever many months, our caseworker told the social worker that we are great parents and we were “full steam ahead in the adoption process” making Joey and I Feel a little bit of relief. That Friday our Caseworker and GAL made a phone call to us mentioning that it’s “concerning that papers aren’t turned in” and that “a call to CPS being made in general, false or not, was concerning”, also mentioning they MAY have to look for other placement. After a great weekend, Monday morning arrived and we headed out to get our finger prints done for the second time to start our Home Study to finalize the adoption. Half way there we received another call from the caseworker and GAL saying they have decided to remove Dalylah from our care and to bring her to the county building at noon. They did not give any warning, they did not give us anymore information other than the “concerns”. This call was at 9:15am meaning we had a little over 2 hours left to spend with my Sister, our best friend, and truly our daughter. How do you explain to a very smart self aware 4 year old girl that you may never see her again? That she has to go to someone else’s house? That she can’t take all of her things or that we can’t go with her? How do you go on with life knowing you aren’t allowed to know where one of your babies are? How do you hide your tears seeing her try to hide her nervousness and her own tears?

As we asked for more information and paperwork we were told we “Unfortunately “ don’t have anymore legal rights and basically that they legally are no longer obligated to tell us anything. This has been the longest most traumatic heart breaking week we’ve ever experienced and want nothing more than to have our baby girl home where she deserves to be.

We are sharing our story in hopes of raising money to take legal action in getting Dalylah home and making things right for her. No child should ever be removed so traumatically and abruptly. We love her and miss her more than anything and pray we get things figured out. Thank you so much for listening to our story, even if you cannot donate, a share would be greatly appreciated.