HAMDEN, Conn. -- Union workers at a state-run facility for boys said they're offering sizable concessions to keep the doors open.

High Meadows in Hamden helps young boys with emotional and medical needs, officials said. In many cases, they said, it's their last chance for help.

But after Gov. Jodi Rell announced in her budget address that High Meadows may close, employees asked her to come for a visit, but she hasn't set up anything up yet.

For nearly 40 boys, High Meadows is home.

"I was watching him die," said Stacy Tattersal, of Bristol. "I told the hospital that I was watching my son die."

She said it's been a long road for her 11-year-old son, Ray. When he was 6 years old, Tattersal said, he had surgery to remove a brain tumor that left him without a pituitary gland -- the kind hormone gland, as she called it.

"He won't grow without shots," Tattersal said.

She said the medical and psychological problems it has caused are profound. For example, he's never thirsty, she said.

"If he doesn't have a strict regimen of certain amounts of fluids going in and out, he'll dehydrate in a matter of hours," Tattersal said.

She said he also has an insatiable appetite.

"He's eaten frozen chicken before," she said. "He's eaten food out of a trash can."

Tattersal said there are deep psychological effects, too.

But she said things became worse when she was diagnosed with cancer and could no longer care for Ray. She said he was sent to an out-of-state facility because no place in Connecticut would take him.

But she said he recently moved back because the staff at High Meadows -- the state's only 24-hour treatment facility -- was willing to do whatever it took to help him.

"He's saying he's thirsty or hungry," said his teacher, David Warren. "He needs a little bit more medical care, so some days we'll have the nurse in with him -- we might have one of the doctors in with him."

Warren said he worries what will happen to Ray and the nearly 40 other young boys who rely on High Meadows if it were to close.

During her budget address last month, Rell said she plans to close the facility.

A spokesperson for the Department of Children and Families, which oversees the home, cited a difficult fiscal situation -- not the quality of care provided -- as the reason for the home's closing.

Staff members said closing High Meadows would destroy the young boys' lives because no other state facility has what they need.

"I think we would see children from High Meadows end up in prisons and different inappropriate places," clinical social worker Jennifer Murphy said.

"It's re-traumatizing. Many of them come from broken homes, and some of them have no families," supervising nurse Wilson Tirado said.

"What facility is going to take and give my son individual treatment that I can't do?" Tattersal asked.

The governor said closing the facility will save the state $11.8 million in capital costs and an additional $10 million in operating costs through 2011.