AUGUSTA – The state on Thursday filed an appeal to a judge’s decision to give class action status to a lawsuit that calls for reforms in how in-home services are provided to children with mental disabilities.

Maine officials argue that trying to craft a single, court-imposed solution for all the children would ignore their individual needs.

If it loses the appeal, the state says it probably will have to settle the case because it would have to analyze and defend the services given to virtually every one of roughly 500 individuals that would make up the class.

The suit against the state was originally filed on behalf of two Augusta-area teen-agers whose families said they were not receiving the care mandated under federal Medicaid law.

First District Judge Gene Carter last week ruled that hundreds of other children in the same situation also could be considered parties in the case. The state filed its appeal in the First Circuit Court in Boston.

The plaintiffs are not asking for money, but they are demanding that the state improve the quality of in-home care for children.

Department of Human Services spokesman David Winslow said the state has been providing in-home services for children with mental impairments for three years. The budget for children’s mental health services has nearly doubled to $120 million in the current budget.

Winslow said that kind of financial commitment shows the state is doing its part to provide the services to the families.

“You need to look at the effort that the state put in,” Winslow said. “We don’t think that the law requires us to provide an unlimited amount of money.”

But Michael Risinger, the father of one of the mentally impaired teen-agers on behalf of whom the original lawsuit was filed, said he was not surprised the state appealed Carter’s ruling. The appeal, he said, enables the state to delay adding more services that would be required if the suit is successful.

“We feel as parents that [the state should be] investing in these children today so that in years to come, when we do have to go into an institution, they don’t have to deal with these behaviors the children are having,” he said.