Three 16-year-olds from Afghanistan have begun a hunger strike in France in protest at the slow process of being reunited with their families in the UK, according to a refugee legal organisation.

Three weeks after the demolition of the Calais camp, several charities say there is rising anxiety among the 1,600 children and young people who were dispersed to disused elderly people’s homes and youth hotels across France without being given information about their future.

The Red Cross and Save the Children have called on the Home Office to urgently provide basic information to children and French hostel staff about the expected timescale for processing applications to come to the UK.

The three boys from Afghanistan who are on hunger strike have been trying to get permission to join relatives in the UK for several months, and had been living in tents in Calais for more than six months, according to Laura Griffiths, a senior field manager for Safe Passage UK. “It is a sign of their desperation at being forgotten,” she said. The organisation was in regular contact with the boys since they stopped eating last week and was trying to convince them to stop the protest, she said.

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Elsewhere, at least 20 children have become so concerned at the absence of information that they have run away from the centres where they have been rehoused, hoping to continue their attempts to come to the UK illegally by smuggling themselves on to lorries.

The 1,600 children and young people who were dispersed from Calais to about 60 hostels across France on 2 November were accompanied by two Home Office staff members on each bus, but the British officials left most centres as soon as the buses arrived at their destination, according to refugee charities who are in contact with the children.

Since then most have had no explanation about the process under way, nor given any clarity about how long they will have to wait before their asylum claims are examined.

Home Office staff have returned to some centres to start interviews, but have not revealed when decisions will be made, according to charity staff.

Volunteers from HelpRefugees, who have visited eight centres, said there were translators in only two of them, and concluded that “overall it is a negative picture”. They said they had met two boys who voiced suicidal thoughts, and many others who were distressed by not knowing what was happening. They were aware of 22 children who had already left three of the centres they visited. They also noted that centres which were well run, with access to translators, had less of a problem with runaways.

“Most kids are already suffering from anxiety having been taken from Calais without any information and now they are in centres with still no information,” Benny Hunter of HelpRefugees said. “They feel safe, they enjoy the showers, but the lack of information is breeding anxiety. Our biggest concern is that this distress and lack of information is driving children to leave centres.”

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Thirteen-year-old Wasilkareem Y, from Afghanistan, was taken on a 12-hour coach trip to a centre in Talence, a suburb of Bordeaux in south-western France, with about 30 other boys from Afghanistan aged between 12 and 17. He was interviewed last week for about eight minutes by a Home Office official about his application to join his maternal uncle in Southampton. He described the process as “disorganised” and said he had been called back to answer questions again after officials had apparently got his forms muddled with someone else’s.

“They registered two of us with the number 75. I said, ‘why are you interviewing me twice?’ They said they had lost the paper. They were asking very simple questions that we have answered before.”

There was no information about when the applications would be approved or rejected. “All the boys were asking, when will there be a result. They said, ‘We are not sure when you will have a reply,’” he said.

Meanwhile, he and the other boys in the centre were struggling with the boredom. “We can have a bath or a shower, and it is warm at least. In Calais it was not warm. But there is nothing for us to do. There are no activities, no school, no chance to learn anything. You just sit in your room and wait,” he said.

He said that because none of the boys spoke French and the staff did not speak English, they were communicating through Google Translate on staff members’ phones. “People feel unhappy and angry,” he said.

After visiting one of the reception centres,, Karl Pike from the Red Cross, said the children were “extremely anxious”, and called on the Home Office to provide urgent information to the children about the timescale for the consideration of applications to come to the UK.

“They need some reassurance that the process is going to happen; that would help avoid them going missing. What would also clearly help if something official-looking was sent to the centres stating when the Home Office is coming back,” he said. “We were surrounded by children with a lot of questions.”

The Home Office said it would not be providing any time frame for the decision-making process. A spokesperson said that officials needed to “continue to ensure the right checks have been made on these young people for their safety and the safety of others. This means assessing their ages, confirming their identities and eligibility to come to the UK and running security checks. The French authorities have committed to supporting minors as we make these essential checks”.

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Save the Children said it was aware that some children were leaving the centres because they did not understand what was happening, and the charity has also called on the Home Office to give children a clearer sense of when they might be told about their future. Safe Passage, which is conducting a census at all 60 centres, said there was particular concern at the absence of information in any language understood by the children.

The frustration expressed by children in France is echoed by some councils in the UK, who had rushed to make beds available for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, and have been frustrated at the delay in transferring children from France.

In a detailed report on eight centres, HelpRefugees workers said the quality of the centres varied considerably. In the better reception centres there were appropriate translators, activities, French lessons and well-qualified staff; children in these centres described themselves as “very lucky”.

In other centres, however, children had not been given winter clothes, and some still only had flip-flops. In one, children had made themselves a cricket bat but did not have a ball. The most common complaint, beyond lack of information, was boredom. Many centres had no television, and no lessons or activities for the children.

During their research at an interview centre near Grenoble, two HelpRefugees volunteers overheard a Home Office official requesting by telephone to a colleague in London that all British staff be taken out of the centres before the results of the asylum applications were announced. The official was heard to request “we want to get teams off the ground before answers come through in case tensions emerge”, according to Hunter and colleague Rosie Pope.

The official was overheard to add: “The expectation is that the Home Office are clearing out the centres; we’re not taking as many as the French think … you’ve got your frontline staff in the middle of the battlefield; it’s going to cause so much tension.”