Aid workers in France, Greece and Italy said unaccompanied refugee children would be devastated by the curtailment of the Dubs scheme, and would respond by risking their lives to get to the UK illegally.

Charity workers in Calais said an estimated 200 asylum-seeking children were now living rough in the forests and woodland around the demolished refugee camp, many of whom had expected to be eligible to be transferred to the UK under the Dubs amendment.

“They are not in tents because it makes them more visible to the police; they want to stay secret and out of sight. But it is quite dangerously cold,” said Amelia Burr, with the charity Help Refugees. Throughout January nighttime temperatures have been around -5C (23F). “We give out sleeping bags and blankets at night; when we come back the next day the blankets are frozen.”

Now that there is little chance of a legal route to the UK, young asylum seekers are once again attempting to get on lorries travelling to the UK at night, she said. Last month a 20-year-old from Eritrea was killed on the motorway. “There is very little legal option for minors who want to get to the UK now, so they are left with only one option, which is to risk their lives to try to get to England.”

Natasha Tsangarides, Greece field manager with the charity Safe Passage, which helps refugee children to find legal ways of seeking asylum in the UK, said there were more than 1,000 child refugees in Greece on a waiting list for places in children’s shelters who urgently needed help accessing appropriate places to stay.

This is another blow in what is amounting to an attack on refugee rights Natasha Tsangarides, Safe Passage

She is currently helping more than 100 minors from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere who were likely to have been eligible under the Dubs legislation to come to the UK. Some are living in squats in Athens, others are living on the streets, and some are in migrant detention centres.

“A couple of boys are prostituting themselves just to survive in Greece. There are over 1,000 lone, vulnerable and desperate children here, who don’t even have a home to sleep in. There is a huge problem here,” she said. “If they are going to take no more than 150 children more from across France, Italy and Greece, that’s simply not good enough.

“It is devastating for the children. The Dubs amendment was a symbol of hope for everyone. These kids have been through enough already – this offered the prospect of security and safety in the UK. This is another blow in what is amounting to an attack on refugee rights. There was public and parliamentary support for it. Everyone will be disappointed.”

Aid workers in Italy said that there was no estimate of how many unaccompanied asylum-seeking children might have been eligible under the Dubs legislation, but last year 28,223 unaccompanied minors arrived in the country, a 100% increase on the previous year. “To deny one of the very few safe and legal routes for unaccompanied minors is clearly going to have a serious impact on their chances of having any kind of safe future,” said Lara Cumming, Help Refugees field manager in Italy, who is based in Palermo. Many children were being exploited, forced to work on farms or in the sex industry. “You see increasing numbers of them in the sex industry; they are visibly minors.”

There was anger from the aid workers at the Home Office decision to wind down the Dubs scheme. “Letting 14- and 15-year-olds sleep out in the cold in woodland wouldn’t be tolerated in the UK, risking their lives to jump on a truck or freeze to death – it just wouldn’t be allowed because it would be deemed negligent. It is disgusting that as a country we are turning our back and allowing them to freeze to death or get run over because we won’t take responsibility for the situation,” Burr from Help Refugees added.