Face to face contact not occurring in the 5 day response timeline was influenced by a delay in the worker being assigned the case, caseload demands, and legislation. During this time period, the agency was trying to work through 200-400 pending cases that hadn't been assigned. This resulted from changes in government regulation, such as the implementation of the Governor's Task Force recommendations. These recommendations created changes to the Intake, Screening and Response Path guidelines, further increasing the number of 24 hour response cases the agency needed to respond to. Additionally, there was an influx of Educational Neglect cases from schools during this time period (spring), which were lower priority cases. Supervisors needed to triage cases and prioritize those needing a 24 hour response, resulting in a delay in assignment of 5 day response cases. This, coupled with the TSO system (technology used by local agency for distribution of cases to units) and the time it takes to review and assign cases, further impacted supervisor workload, which delayed the cases being assigned.  Supervisor workload was also adversely impacted by having 10 staff to supervise with high turnover rates for those staff.  Also, induction staff was not being trained in the investigation response, resulting in a larger learning curve for those coming from the induction unit and responding to child protection assessments and investigations.  

The worker assigned to the case identified the case as lower priority as well because the child was no longer in the care of the alleged offender. When attempting to schedule a face to face visit with the family, which was difficult due to workload levels, the worker did safety plan with the child's mother via phone. The workload which made it difficult for scheduling included the worker training a new staff and the number of checklists needing to be completed for each case. Further supporting staff's need to prioritize immediate response cases is that Minnesota State Statute 626.556, subd. 10(j) governs immediate response timeframes for predatory offenders and is based on allegations versus actual risk to the alleged victim.  As a result of this statute and since funding is tied to compliance with this measure, staff don't have discretion to respond to alleged victims based upon actual risk and are forced to respond based on allegation type and need to prioritize these cases over ones that come in as a 5 day response which may actually be at greater risk in some cases.
Further influencing the delay in contact was the interpretation of guidance and statute that CP can delay contact with alleged victims in 5 day response cases if directed by law enforcement such as in this case.