Write notes the assistant understands
Notes written in plain sentences, with full names, years and explicitly stated relationships, give more accurate drafts and fewer questions.
The assistant relates each item in a draft to the sentence from which it was taken. Notes in which every fact is written out in full therefore produce drafts that are easier to check and that raise fewer questions.
Procedure
- 1
Give each person’s full name once, and use the same name each time that person is mentioned again.
- 2
Give a birth year or an age for each person, and the year of each marriage, separation and death.
- 3
State each relationship explicitly, as in “Paul’s parents are Walter and Joan”.
- 4
Name each condition as it was diagnosed, and add “suspected” or “in recovery” where either applies.
- 5
Describe emotional relationships in plain words, such as close, distant, in conflict or no contact.
- 6
State who lives with whom, and refer to the person for whom the genogram is drawn as the client.
The templates page provides intake notes for practice. On a template card, click Intake notes to show the notes, and then click Copy and paste them into the notes sheet.
Example of suitable notes
The following passage about a fictional family is written in this way. “Ellie Hawkins (born 2009) is the client. Her parents, Paul (born 1971) and Helen (née Fletcher, born 1974), married in 2003 and are distant from each other. Paul’s father Walter (1944–2021) had heart disease, and Paul’s mother Joan (born 1947) has depression.” It states each relationship directly and gives every year that is known.
How the assistant reads the notes
The assistant is instructed to record only what the text states and not to add people, names, dates or conditions that the notes do not contain. Any item that cannot be matched to a passage in the notes is flagged as Not in your notes, so that it can be checked before the draft is added.
When a sentence can be read in two ways, the assistant drafts one reading and asks a question about it. Typical cases are a pronoun such as “his” that could refer to more than one person, and two people who share a first name and may be the same person.
The sex of each person is taken from words in the text, such as “son” or “her”, or otherwise from a first name that is clearly male or female. Guesses from first names can be switched off in the side panel with Sex from first names, and those people are then drawn with the symbol for unknown sex.
Sentences from which nothing could be drawn are counted in the summary of the draft. Click Show beside the count to underline them in the notes, and then add those details by hand.
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