I’m Ellen van den Berg, founder of Chameleon Psychology. I’m a Dutch Educationalist and Child Psychologist specialised in working with children, their families and their environment (for example, schools). In the region of Southampton, I work in association with Hampshire & Surrey Psychology. I'm specialised in working with children with social/ emotional difficulties and challenging behaviour, including for children with ASD, ADHD, anxiety and depression.
I have worked for more than 15 years with children and their families, within a variety of settings, from organisations and schools for children and adults with learning disabilities to child protection services in the Netherlands and an outpatient service for families with children with mental health issues or learning disabilities in Belgium.
As a Mother of two young children, I understand all too well the challenges (and enormous rewards) parenting can bring and how difficult it can be in today’s modern world to successfully juggle the many roles we have and still parent effectively. In response to this, combined with my passion for working with young people and their families I decided to establish my own Child Psychology Practice in the UK and online.
Much of my work focuses around giving parents their confidence back and helping all members of the family to recognise and appreciate their own unique skills and strengths and that of other members of the family unit. My approach is both Systemic and Solution Focussed, working with families to recognise and build on their strengths and to utilise these in managing the parenting issues they might be facing. Through this process and through the application of tools such as games, figures and video analyses, everyone (adult or child) in the family is encouraged to view the situation from a different perspective, promoting personal growth, building self-esteem and restoring balance to the family. I am also trained in the Method of Non-Violent Resistance, where parents learn to believe in themselves again and set boundaries for their child in a loving way, to help their child to grow up stable and safe.
The second arm of my business focusses on supporting expat families through the transition of relocation. From a personal point of view, I'm part of an expat family and we have made the decision to move a number of times over recent years, from the Netherlands to Belgium in 2011 and from Belgium to the UK in 2016. From this, I have personally experienced the challenges of starting over and setting up a social network for myself and my family. It's not always easy to deal with changes but with resilience, perseverance and a lot of self-belief, I’ve managed to overcome these challenges and transition successfully. This puts me in a great position to support others experiencing this change.
Get in touch today to discuss how I can partner with your family to overcome any challenges you might be facing.
Further qualifications include:
- MSc and BSc Education and Child Studies, specialising in Clinical Child and Adolescent Studies (Leiden University, Netherlands)
- BSw Social Work (University of Applied Sciences, Rotterdam)
- Post Graduate Education in family work, systemic work, crisis intervention and mental health in children and adults with learning difficulties
- Commitment to continuing professional development and regular engagement in professional supervision
I'm also a registered member of the following:
