Family Support Unit — Sierra Leone Police's Nationwide One-Stop Model for Gender-Based Violence Response

The Family Support Unit (FSU) began in 1999 as a Domestic Violence Unit at Kissy Police Division in Freetown, part of Sierra Leone's post-conflict effort to rebuild trust in policing. It was formalised nationally as the FSU and given clearer legal powers when Parliament passed the Domestic Violence Act, 2007, which criminalised domestic violence and empowered FSU officers to mediate or refer cases for prosecution.
The network expanded from roughly 34 units in the early 2000s to about 80 FSU stations by the early 2020s, coordinated through a central hub at Criminal Investigations Department headquarters in Freetown. UNICEF-supported case-management reforms have improved how FSUs record and refer cases of violence against children and women.
A 2025 peer-reviewed socio-ecological study of survivors in Sierra Leone found that despite the FSU's presence, survivors still face significant barriers to healthcare and justice, including under-resourcing, inconsistent case handling and social stigma — evidence that institutional reach has outpaced service quality in parts of the country.

Read the full analysis: https://www.unicef.org/sierraleone/stories/family-support-unit-improving-systems-support-survivors-violence-and-abuse