Norwood resident Michelle Sweeney has worked with hundreds of Massachusetts’ most vulnerable children and young adults at Pappas Rehabilitation Hospital for Children for over a quarter of a century.

Sweeney, celebrating her 27th work anniversary next month at the Canton-based facility that provides essential services for those with severe disabilities, says she’s seen patients thrive as many have reunified with their families, entered adult group homes, or gained independent apartments.

But Pappas’ future hangs in the balance.

Sweeney and her colleagues learned last week that the Healey administration intends to close the facility and move services to Western Massachusetts Hospital in Westfield, over 100 miles away, to save costs.

“The air got sucked out of the room,” Sweeney told the Herald of her reaction to the development. “The tears started flowing, and don’t get me wrong, this was not about me. The immediate thought was (on) every patient in that place.”

State public health officials have said the move is “part of a comprehensive strategy to improve the delivery of care for children with complex medical needs.”

They’ve highlighted how recent studies determined the Canton facility is “unable to accommodate the kind of technology and high-acuity care that many children with significant disabilities need.”

The pending closure, coinciding with a plan to shut down Pocasset Mental Health Center, a 16-bed psychiatric hospital in Bourne, came to light last week in Gov. Maura Healey’s $62 billion budget proposal for the next fiscal year.

Healey has touted her spending request, a 7.4% increase over the current fiscal year, as a “balanced” and “fiscally responsible” attempt to conform to slower revenue growth in the post-pandemic era by relying on a voter-approved surtax to buoy spending. Budget cuts to specific programs are aimed at saving cash.

Consolidating hospitals under the Department of Public Health, officials have projected, would save the state $31 million. The plans put at least 281 state jobs at risk of being eliminated.

More than 225 employees at Pappas would be affected if the plans go through. Many staffers, however, have homes in the Canton area and are parents of school-aged children. Commutes each way would jump an hour or more.

“There have been so many promises that jobs won’t be lost,” special education teacher Kim Daley told the Herald, “and I’m not quite sure … if there’s an option for people to go to Westfield, but geographically, that’s unrealistic.”

A DPH spokesperson has said the agency would work with “labor partners to identify appropriate opportunities for staff.”

Sweeney, Pappas’ physical therapy supervisor, and Daley, a Franklin resident in her fifteenth year at the hospital, said the potential loss, though, is all about the impacts on their patients who range in age from 7 to 22 years old and have physical and cognitive disabilities as well as chronic and medically complex conditions requiring hospital-level care.

Pappas, established over a century ago, provides 24/7 nursing care, therapeutic services including speech and language, occupational, physical, and recreational, and programming to advance independent living skills, among other services.

Patients learn music, technology, physical education, and art along with general curriculum in classrooms and in other settings on the 160-plus acre campus.

Daley said teachers are constantly collaborating with therapists. She added: “The students are at the center of everything we do.”

The campus offers a fully accessible swimming pool, an arena for horseback riding, a kitchen where patients learn to prepare snacks and meals, specialized equipment for children in wheelchairs to walk in the hallways, specialized tricycles, and more.

Sweeney highlighted her fears that if services are moved west, the group classroom settings will no longer be accommodated and one-on-one tutoring will become the norm.

‘It’s a model that is individualized to our facility only,” she said. “You don’t have an entire special education school at a hospital. We are incorporating their therapeutic interventions … from the minute they wake up until the end of their day.”

Pappas is licensed for 60 beds but it’s only serving 36 patients. State public health officials have said more than half are over 18 and are awaiting discharge to more appropriate settings.

Some patients will be transferred to Western Massachusetts Hospital, where the state says it intends to renovate a wing housing a 25-bed dedicated pediatric care program “equipped with enhanced medical infrastructure.” Others may move to various facilities across the Bay State that can accommodate their specific needs.

Officials have said the transfers will happen over the next six to nine months.

“What we know is that many of those children actually could be better cared for, more safely cared for, more compassionately cared for at home with their parents,” Public Health Commissioner Robbie Goldstein told WCVB.

The Massachusetts Nurses Association condemned the planned closure. In a statement, it said Western Massachusetts Hospital is “one of the state’s public health hospitals … already at over 90% capacity.”

Pappas’ employees are racing to convince Healey not to close their facility, pushing a large social media campaign and encouraging everyone to reach out to their state lawmakers.

The Healey administration has said legislative approval is not needed for the closures.

“We need legislators’ support to invest in Pappas,” Sweeney said. “If we aren’t investing in the most vulnerable children in our state, I don’t know what else we should be investing in.

“In my eyes,” she added, “it’s almost criminal to not provide them absolutely everything that Pappas can provide them with.”

State Sen. Paul Feeney and Rep. Bill Galvin, both representing Canton, expressed their disappointment and concerns in statements about what they called a “unilateral decision” that didn’t include input from stakeholders and community members.

“Please know I am using my platform … to ask that they reconsider this decision for the sake of children who depend on Pappas for their quality of life and wellbeing,”  said Galvin, a lifelong Canton resident.

More than 10,000 people are echoing Galvin’s call. As of Sunday afternoon, a Change.com petition seeking reconsideration from state officials had collected 10,620 signatures in just four days.

In her budget proposal, Healey also pitched reducing the number of state mental health case managers from 340 to 170.

The governor argued the costs of services and doing business in Massachusetts are increasing and key sectors like health care, education, and housing are stressed under heightened demand from residents.

“There are no words I could put together to say why Pappas is so important,” Daley said. “Come see for yourself because no matter what anybody says, you think you get it, but you don’t until you see it for yourself.”

Gov. Maura Healey, seen here with Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, speaks last week after filing her 2026 budget. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald)