Welfare agency Anglicare has breached its duty of care to children under its guardianship in residential care, Victorian Premier Denis Napthine says.

Anglicare is at the centre of claims that children taken from their parents for residential care with the welfare body were sexually abused.

The claims have surfaced in recent court cases in which parents sought to regain guardianship of their children from Victoria’s Department of Human Services, which then handed the children to Anglicare.

Dr Napthine said Anglicare had made mistakes.

“It has had a long tradition of high-quality service to vulnerable people in our community and children in care,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

“This is clearly a situation where they have failed in their duty of care.

“Anglicare have apologised for that, and Anglicare together with the Department of Human Services have put in place significant changes to remedy this situation.”

Dr Napthine said the government was investigating the case.

“Already, significant actions have been taken to protect those children, to relocate staff that were involved in the care of those children, to implement changes to ensure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again,” he said.

“The children’s services commissioner, Bernie Geary, is now looking at this further and there are other matters before the courts which limit what I can say.”