Sweetser is shutting down two of the five programs it took over from the defunct Richardson Hollow Mental Health Services of Lewiston.

As of Monday, Oct. 15, the Saco-based mental health agency will end the in-home daily living skills program for people with mental illness and the case management program for adults with mental retardation.

About 20 staff members and more than 40 clients will be affected, according to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.

Sweetser didn’t offer those programs before it took over for Richardson Hollow nearly a month ago. Because Sweetser had no experience with either daily living skills or mental retardation work, President Carl Pendleton said his agency never planned to run the programs forever.

“It’s a program of service that we have just never done,” he said Thursday. “We want to focus on the things that we do well.”

Pendleton said former Richardson Hollow employees were told the programs were temporary when they were hired. A DHHS representative said the state also knew the situation was temporary.

When Richardson Hollow abruptly closed last month, approximately 10 clients didn’t automatically transfer to Sweetser, and one ended up in crisis.

To help ensure that everyone gets assistance when Sweetser’s programs shut down, DHHS met three weeks ago with service providers in the region “to try and set an orderly process in place so that we could keep a handle on it and we didn’t have people fall through cracks,” said Don Chamberlain, director of community systems for DHHS.

All the providers were interested in hiring staff members and taking on clients, Chamberlain said. The department is working to get clients placed with new service providers by Monday.

“I would expect nothing works perfectly, so we will probably have some issues in this changeover,” Chamberlain said. “But we’re going to be keeping track of all of these consumers and following up with them so that what happens is only very brief if something fails.”

Although Sweetser will shut down two of the programs it inherited from Richardson Hollow, it plans to keep three others: case management for children with mental illness, case management for adults with mental illness and outpatient services. Pendleton said it’s been challenging for Sweetser to add Richardson Hollow’s clients and employees while also dealing with national accreditation work and the state’s new managed care program, but his agency isn’t sorry it stepped in for Richardson Hollow.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “This is fine for us. We’re happy. We’re proud to be able to do it.”