For your work
For your work
Genograms are drawn in social work, therapy, teaching, nursing and family history, and each kind of work asks something different of the chart. Each page here describes one kind of work, what it records, which templates fit it and how a draft from notes helps.
- Genograms in social workA genogram in social work records who is in a child’s life, where each person lives, who holds parental responsibility and which agencies are involved, on one sheet that a colleague can read in a minute. This page describes what the chart records in assessment and case work, what a draft from written notes does and does not do, and what to be careful about when the chart leaves your desk.Last checked on 20 October 2026
- Genograms in family therapyThe genogram was shaped in family therapy, and the intake interview is still where most of them are drawn. This page describes what the chart records at intake, how patterns across generations are read from it, how the emotional lines are chosen, and how a chart drafted from session notes is kept current between sessions.Last checked on 20 October 2026
- Genograms for counselling studentsMost counselling, psychotherapy and social work courses set a family of origin genogram in the first year, usually with a reflective essay beside it. This page describes what the assignment asks for, how to draw three generations of your own family in the standard notation, what to leave out, and how to practise first on a family that is not your own.Last checked on 20 October 2026
- Genograms for nursing and medical family historyA medical family history is a genogram with the conditions in the foreground. Three generations are drawn in the standard notation, each condition is coloured and named in the key, and ages at diagnosis and at death are written beside the people they belong to. This page describes what the chart records in a clinic, how a pattern is read from it, which medical templates to open first, and where the printable sheet fits.Last checked on 20 October 2026
- Genograms in teachingGenograms are taught on counselling, social work, nursing and family studies courses, and in some schools as part of history or personal development. This page describes how the 34 templates are used as worked cases, how the symbol chart is used as a handout, how a class works in the browser without accounts, and how finished charts reach you for marking.Last checked on 20 October 2026
- Genograms for family historyA family tree records who descended from whom. A genogram records that and also how people lived together, how they got on and what they died of. This page describes what a genogram adds to a tree, how to bring a tree across from a family tree program as a GEDCOM file, which of the famous templates show the idea best, and what to think about before sharing a chart of living relatives.Last checked on 20 October 2026