For an agency dedicated to compassionate care, Richardson Hollow showed a cold, calculating side by its after-hours slashing of benefits for dozens of employees on Aug. 24.

By withholding this announcement until late that Friday, the state’s largest in-home provider of mental health services left workers baffled and distraught. This tactic was clipped straight from the worst corporate management handbook, designed to provide maximum protection for the employer, not the aggrieved employee.

“It may be legal, but it’s not moral,” one angry worker, Vicki Boehm, said about the news, a likely summation of the feeling that also swept over her colleagues. Richardson Hollow may feel compelled – because of state funding cuts – to make this drastic move, but the timing of the announcement was dead wrong.

And totally out of character for an organization that serves the less fortunate.

When funds for mental health disappear, the effects are apparent. Workers lose benefits, as has happened at Richardson Hollow. Buildings lose tenants, as has been displayed in downtown Lewiston, where the McCrory building has gone from dilapidation, to planned new Sweetser site, back to plywood-covered derelict.

Most important, though, is patients lose services, as agencies cut programs to cope with reduced funding. Slow-in-coming MaineCare reimbursements forced organizations to reduce the availability of mental and behavioral health care. No agency has been immune.

Richardson Hollow lays blame for its fiscal woes squarely on the state. Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services, in turn, has called for an audit of the agency to determine whether its management has acted prudently.

This postmortem can only uncover past mistakes, or validate current claims. It does nothing to ensure the needed care provided by Richardson Hollow to its clients across Maine continues, which is the utmost priority. It’s these people – more so than their caseworkers – who are most impacted by this fiscal crunch.

Disruptions in care are devastating for persons who cannot care for themselves. For some, in-home services are lifelines to the outside world, and the visits of caretakers are their rare opportunities to experience it, and live beyond how the restrictions their illnesses or conditions bind them.

The caretakers who engage and treat these persons show great compassion.

Richardson Hollow should have shown some, as well.