ELLSWORTH – The staff at the KidsPeace campus on Graham Lake will shrink by 25 employees, effective immediately, because of recent funding changes by the state Department of Health and Human Services.

Fifteen workers have been or will be laid off and another 10 positions that are currently vacant will be eliminated at the Ellsworth location, Executive Director Scott Connors said late Friday.

The layoffs and elimination of positions brings the number of employees in Ellsworth to about 110.

KidsPeace, a 124-year-old children’s charity with 64 centers across the county and nine campuses in Maine, provides a variety of services to children affected by trauma, many of whom have serious behavioral or mental health issues.

The job cuts in Ellsworth are in response to changes in state funding brought about by DHHS’s recent “Children Services Reform” initiative, according to Connors.

“Basically, the state is not willing to support us the way that it has in the past,” he said Friday by telephone. “It’s not unique to Ellsworth, certainly; it’s happening everywhere else. A lot of other agencies have had layoffs and some have flat out gone out of business.”

A spokesperson at the state Department of Health and Human Services could not be reached for comment late Friday.

Connors said the DHHS initiative, which was introduced in the 122nd Legislative session, has called for reduction in funding to support what it calls diagnostic services.

That loss in funding has reduced the number of children who are eligible for the 45-day diagnostic care unit at the KidsPeace location at Graham Lake.

“As far as out-of-home diagnostic assessment, the state would rather this be done in the community setting,” Connors explained.

Children who are receiving diagnostic care will be transferred to another therapeutic program offered by KidsPeace, he said.

“We’ll mourn the loss of that program because it helped literally hundreds of people, but we have to move on,” Connors said.

The laid off workers will not be offered severance packages per se, but Connors said “they will be taken care of.”

“We all feel a deep sense of loss for these valued employees and for the effect of these changes,” the executive director wrote in a press release late Friday. “It’s simply not possible to continue to employ them in the current funding climate.”