Genogram example · Specialty
Community Support Network Genogram
Quick answer
At a glance
| This example | |
|---|---|
| Generations | 3 |
| Family members | 8 |
| Index person | María Rivera |
| Emotional relationships | Close, Distant, Conflict and Barrier |
| Category | Specialty |
| Tags | Clinical, Cultural, Educational |
About this genogram
A community genogram mapping a Guatemalan immigrant family's connections to community resources including ESL programs, a local church, community health center, public school system, and neighborhood support network. Demonstrates how institutional connections and barriers (language, transportation, documentation status) shape family functioning and resilience.
Family analysis
Overview
This community genogram maps the Rivera family — a 3-generation Guatemalan immigrant household comprising 8 family members — alongside 7 institutional connections and 4 identified community barriers. The index patient is María Rivera (b. 1980), a mother of three who presented at the community health center with somatic complaints later identified as anxiety related to her family's precarious documentation status. The genogram extends beyond the household to include the family's church (Iglesia Pentecostés), the county ESL program, the children's public school, a community health center, a neighborhood mutual aid network, and two employers. This ecological mapping reveals that the family's functioning cannot be understood apart from its institutional context.
The family's community resource utilization follows a gendered and generational pattern that carries significant clinical implications. Abuela Carmen (b. 1948), the family matriarch, maintains the strongest connection to the church community, which serves as her primary source of emotional support, social identity, and practical assistance. Her son-in-law Marco (b. 1977) interfaces primarily with his employer and a small network of male co-workers from the same region of Guatemala, creating an insular support system that provides economic stability but limited access to broader community resources. María occupies the critical middle position, serving as the family's primary interface with the health center, the children's school, and the ESL program. This concentration of institutional navigation labor in one family member creates a bottleneck effect — when María is overwhelmed or ill, the entire family's access to resources constricts.
The most clinically significant finding is the parentification of 14-year-old Isabella, who serves as the family's primary English-language cultural broker. Isabella translates at medical appointments, interprets school communications, negotiates with landlords, and explains legal documents. This role reversal — in which a child mediates between her parents and institutional authority — creates a power inversion that undermines parental hierarchy and places developmentally inappropriate burden on the adolescent. Isabella's recent decline in academic performance and emerging social withdrawal correlate with an increase in her brokering duties following the family's move to a new school district. The genogram makes visible what a purely intrafamilial assessment would miss: Isabella's symptoms are not simply a family dynamics issue but an ecological one rooted in the family's relationship to institutional systems.
Barrier mapping reveals four primary impediments to resource access: limited English proficiency (affecting Carmen, Marco, and María), lack of reliable transportation (the family shares one vehicle, which Marco uses for work), documentation-related fear (which prevents the family from accessing certain government services despite eligibility), and cultural mistrust of mental health services (rooted in both stigma and previous negative experiences with authority figures). These barriers interact synergistically — for example, the combination of limited English and documentation fear means María avoids the emergency room even when medically indicated, instead relying on the community health center's limited hours. The genogram reveals that the neighborhood mutual aid network partially compensates for institutional barriers, with neighbors providing childcare, transportation, and informal health advice, but this network is itself fragile and dependent on the undocumented status of its members.
Clinically, this community genogram reframes the presenting problem from an individual anxiety disorder to a systemic issue of ecological stress. Effective intervention requires not only individual or family therapy but also community-level advocacy: connecting the family with a bilingual patient navigator, reducing Isabella's brokering burden through professional interpretation services, strengthening María's direct institutional access through ESL advancement, and addressing documentation-related anxiety through legal consultation. The genogram serves as both a clinical assessment tool and an advocacy document, making visible the structural inequities that shape this family's daily functioning. For practitioners working with immigrant families, the community genogram is an essential complement to traditional family assessment.
How do you read the Community Support Network Genogram?
- 1
Find each person and generation
Squares are males and circles are females, and each row is one generation, oldest at the top. It spans 3 generations. - 2
Check the status markers
Markers on a symbol add facts about that person: Index Patient (Arrow) and Institution (Hexagon). The index person, the focus of the assessment, is María Rivera. - 3
Follow the family lines
Horizontal lines join partners and vertical lines drop to their children, born left to right in birth order. This genogram uses Marriage, Parent-Child and Resource Connection lines. - 4
Read the emotional lines
Lines drawn between two people show how they relate: Close, Distant, Conflict and Barrier. Notice who has several lines converging on them, and which patterns repeat from one generation to the next.
Genogram symbols used in this example
| Symbol | Type | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Male (Square) | Person Symbols | A square represents a male family member in standard genogram notation. |
| Female (Circle) | Person Symbols | A circle represents a female family member in standard genogram notation. |
| Index Patient (Arrow) | Status Markers | An arrow pointing to a person identifies them as the index patient — the individual who is the focus of the clinical assessment. |
| Institution (Hexagon) | Status Markers | A hexagon represents an institutional or community resource connected to the family system. |
| Marriage | Structural Relationships | A solid horizontal line connecting two individuals represents a marriage or committed partnership. |
| Parent-Child | Structural Relationships | A vertical line descending from a couple line to a child symbol represents a parent-child relationship. |
| Resource Connection | Structural Relationships | A line connecting a family member to an institution represents active utilization of that community resource. |
| Close | Emotional Relationships | Two parallel lines between individuals represent an emotionally close relationship. |
| Distant | Emotional Relationships | A dotted line represents an emotionally distant or disengaged relationship. |
| Conflict | Emotional Relationships | A zigzag line between individuals represents an openly conflictual relationship. |
| Barrier | Emotional Relationships | A line with a perpendicular bar indicates an institutional barrier impeding resource access. |
Build a genogram like this one
Example prompt
- 1
Start from the dashboard
Sign in to GenogramAI and choose Create with AI (paid plans), or open a blank genogram and use Ask AI (any plan). To start from this exact chart instead, use Open as template. - 2
Describe your family
Paste a description like the one above, with your own names, dates, relationships and health history. - 3
Check and adjust
Edit people and lines by hand, or ask the AI for one change at a time. - 4
Export
Download a PNG on the free plan. PDF and SVG export are on paid plans.
The free plan includes 2 genograms and 5 AI credits a month. See the AI genogram creator for what else it can do.
Related resources
- Learn how genograms in social work professionals use community-level genograms to map family ecosystems.
- Explore how cultural genograms capture the influence of heritage and identity on family patterns.
- This example uses the close relationship symbol to denote strong community bonds.
- The distant relationship symbol indicates limited or impeded access to resources.
Frequently asked questions
What is a community genogram and how does it differ from a traditional family genogram?
A community genogram extends the traditional family genogram by mapping not only intrafamilial relationships but also the family's connections to external institutions, resources, and community systems. In this example, the Rivera family's ties to their church, ESL program, community health center, and school system are mapped alongside family relationships, revealing how institutional access and barriers shape family functioning. This approach is particularly valuable in social work and community-based practice.
How does the Community Support Network genogram illustrate institutional barriers for immigrant families?
This genogram uses specialized notation to indicate the quality and accessibility of each community connection. Barriers such as language limitations, lack of transportation, documentation status concerns, and cultural mistrust of institutions are mapped as impediments between the family and resources. The visualization makes it clear which family members serve as cultural brokers and how resource access differs across generations — the children often navigate systems more fluently than adults.
What clinical insights does mapping community resources on a genogram provide?
Mapping community resources reveals the family's ecological context — the web of support and stress that exists beyond the household walls. Clinicians can identify resource gaps, over-reliance on single institutions, untapped community assets, and the emotional labor of cultural brokering. For the Rivera family, the genogram shows that the eldest daughter serves as translator and system navigator, creating a parentification dynamic that would be invisible on a standard family genogram.
Can community genograms be used in non-clinical settings like schools or community organizations?
Yes. Community genograms are widely used in school counseling, community health settings, nonprofit program planning, and social service agencies. They help professionals understand a family's full ecosystem rather than viewing the family in isolation. Schools use them to understand why a student may struggle with attendance (transportation barriers) or parent engagement (language barriers, work schedules), while community organizations use them to identify service gaps and build more culturally responsive programming.
About this example
