A father’s story for Black History Month 2025

Read Elliott’s story as a father

“Hi, my name is Elliott, and I offered to do this vlog because this year’s theme for Black History month is, standing firm in power and pride.

I consider myself to be a proud black man who stands firm in my beliefs. But I recognise that anyone can say that it is how you try to live that makes a difference.

I take pride in being an active father to my three children. I work for Future Men as a co-ordinator in the Fathers Development Team and am now a member of Family Rights Group’s parents’ panel which is made up of parents with lived experience of the child welfare system.

At home, work and in my community, I am focussed on working to empower boys and men to become positive, responsible, and fulfilled individuals through mentoring, and education.

But sometimes being strong does mean that you need to ask for help. Many years ago my family were confronted by a serious issue. As parents we had not caused the problem but on our own we could not solve it. We needed help.
Many of those close to us could not believe we would consider discussing our family with children’s services, but I took the difficult decision to do just that.

Don’t get me wrong, we were afraid, but we stood firm and refused to allow the fear of potential ethnic bias and negative stereotypes stop us from doing everything we could for our family, and in our case, we received the help we needed.

That experience has helped me professionally when advising the fathers I support, many of them whom, for different reasons, are involved with children’s social care.

I feel that all three of my current roles in life, as the father, a father’s worker and panel member help me to promote the fact that fathers, of all ethnic groups can have a huge impact on their children’s lives.

But to do this, we need to be involved, as far as it is safe to do so, in our children’s upbringing. As well as recognising there are personal, social and cultural barriers that exist which can hinder this.

Children, especially those from our culture need positive role models in their lives who they can talk to, learn from and be encouraged so that they can be the strong, culturally aware young people of tomorrow.

Regardless of our age, we all have something to contribute to our community, and using your lived experience to highlight the positives and sometimes negative aspects of life faced by black people, I feel is a positive way to start.”