because apparently she hasnt been adopted, she is in the foster care system

that is where my initial confusion came from

I thought she had been adopted so was wondering how she was living with Sienna so easily and quickly - surely if she HAD been adopted then the adoptive parents, who are legally her parents, wouldnt want their daughter living with Sienna

someone then posted that she hadnt been adopted but had been in a care home and then someone else said she was living with a foster parent

the HO website (or channel 4 website) states Nico has been living in a care home.........

not so simple at all

Kids in care homes end up being fostered if they are too much trouble. So the fostering family can keep an eye on them. Fostering is only temporary care.

Basically because Patrick was going around making things up, it wasn't cleared up properly what was actually true or not.

Was that Denise even anything to do with Nico? Or was she just the mother of that girl playing sports hired by Patrick to say those things to put Sienna of the trail?

Or was she really Nico's foster mother (not adoptive clearly as Nico spent time in care homes) forced into making up some cock and bull story about 'Caroline' to put Sienna off ?

BiB: I don't think so because the day they went to see that girl, before they left Patrick handed Denise a thick folder of stuff and said "That's everything I have on your daughter's whereabouts", and it looked like the folder the private detective - the one hired to find Nico/Sophie - had given to Patrick earlier.

OK, so if we assume that that woman was not Sienna's daughter's adoptive mother, and if we assume that Nico is Sienna's daughter, who was twitching the curtain upstairs when Sienna and Nico left that woman's house? More importantly, when Leela set about finding Sienna's daughter, how did she 'find' her at that address? And how did Patrick know that that was where Sienna and Leela were going?

You're all asking too many sensible questions. Nico was taken from Sienna at birth. No way would a newborn be in care for their whole childhood. There would be countless prospective parents desperate to adopt her, and Patrick himself said she went to a family through a contact of his.

This would mean, however, that Nico can't be with Sienna. She'd have parents and couldn't just up and leave. Hollyoaks would have to write a proper runaway storyline with her parents finding her, Social Services, police, lawyers etc. They don't want that. They just want Nico with Sienna. So they've thrown in a few lines about her being in care, made things deliberately ambiguous with Denise, and hopefully the viewers will just accept Nico is now part of the Blake family. It's ridiculous.

There are big gaping holes in both of my theories but the official story is probably that Denise was her foster mother (not adoptive) and she ran away to find Sienna.

But I have to agree with JingleJangle, We're not meant to ask or think too much about it because there are big gaping holes in this storyline. Rather than just call Denise or social services and tell them where Nico is, Patrick tries to set her up for stealing a watch and then seemingly just drops his vendetta against her (although in six months time they'll probably pick it back up again)

I think we just have to accept that this storyline is ridiculously unrealistic and just try not to think about it too much lol

Yes, that's about the size of it. I'm afraid, as with all the other HO storylines these days.

A huge amount of Hollyoaks is unrealistic