Kinship Care Genogram for a Child Welfare Assessment
Social work genogram of three children in kinship care: foster placement, prison and rehab boxes, ended relationships, abuse and neglect lines.
Interactive Kinship Care Genogram for a Child Welfare Assessment
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About This Genogram
A child welfare genogram of a fictional family in which three children live in kinship care with their grandmother. Their mother is in residential treatment for opioid use, the older children’s father is in prison, and the two eldest spent a year in foster care. Shows institution boxes, foster and lived-with lines, ended relationships and abuse and neglect lines.
How to Read This Genogram
Standard genogram notation follows the conventions established by McGoldrick, Gerson, and Petry, which are widely adopted across social work, marriage and family therapy, psychology, and medicine. Squares represent male-identified individuals, circles represent female-identified individuals, and an X through either symbol indicates the person is deceased. Horizontal lines connect partners, with a single slash for separation and a double slash for divorce. Vertical and diagonal lines descend to children, who are arranged in birth order from left to right within a generation. A three-generation diagram is the minimum recommended for clinical use because it provides enough generational depth to identify repeating patterns.
Clinical applications range from intake assessment to treatment planning and outcome review. In a first session, a clinician sketching a genogram with a client gathers structural and historical data while simultaneously building rapport through collaborative storytelling. The resulting diagram then guides the clinician toward hypotheses about symptom function, family roles, and relational resources available to the client. In subsequent sessions the genogram can be updated as new information surfaces, and tracking those additions over time often reveals how the client's understanding of their own family history shifts in parallel with therapeutic progress.
Key Patterns in This Genogram
Family Structure
How this family structure is represented using standard genogram notation.
Relationship Patterns
Key relationship dynamics and emotional bonds within the family system.
Clinical Application
How professionals use this type of genogram in assessment and treatment.
Family Analysis
Mason (16), Lily (13) and Kai (8) have lived with their maternal grandmother, Dolores Ramirez, since 2022. Child protective services removed Mason and Lily from their mother Angela in 2021; they spent a year with licensed foster parents Greg and Donna Miller before kinship placement was approved. Angela, who has opioid use disorder and depression, entered residential treatment in 2025 and has monthly supervised visits.
The genogram records two ended relationships for Angela: cohabitation with Chris Doyle (Mason and Lily’s father), which ended in 2014 after physical abuse, and a dating relationship with Tyrell Brooks (Kai’s father), which ended in 2019. Chris is in state prison until 2027 and has a history of methamphetamine use. Tyrell is not drawn as a risk and could be explored as a resource for Kai.
Protective factors are as visible as risks: Dolores’s close bond with Mason, her stable home and her daughter Marisol and son-in-law Ben nearby. Risks for the placement include Dolores’s hypertension and age, the conflict between Dolores and Angela, and Mason’s PTSD and ADHD. Kai’s speech delay is noted for school planning. A worker can use the chart directly in a family group conference.
Build a Similar Genogram
A practitioner documenting a family similar to this one would typically record three generations of household composition, significant life events such as births, deaths, marriages, and separations, any relevant medical or mental health history, and the quality of key relationships between members. That information comes from a combination of the client's verbal account, intake questionnaires, and, where available, collateral records. The completed diagram captures both the factual structure of the family and the practitioner's clinical observations about relational patterns, making it a reference that can be shared across disciplines or reviewed at future stages of treatment.
GenogramAI's AI genogram generator allows you to build a diagram like this one from a plain-language description of the family. You type or paste a narrative, such as the basic structure and any key relationships or health history you want to include, and the AI parses that text, places the correct symbols, draws the appropriate relationship lines, and arranges the layout automatically. The result is a fully editable diagram that you can refine, annotate, and export for clinical records or educational use. Try the AI genogram creator to generate your own genogram from a text description in seconds.
Genogram Symbols Used in This Example
The following standard genogram symbols appear in the Kinship Care Genogram for a Child Welfare Assessment. Each symbol follows McGoldrick and Gerson clinical notation conventions.
Person Symbols
- Male (Square)
- A square represents a male family member.
- Female (Circle)
- A circle represents a female family member.
- Index person (highlighted outline)
- The person at the centre of the assessment is drawn with a highlighted outline.
- Deceased (X)
- An X through the symbol marks a person who has died; birth and death years are written above it.
- Age inside the symbol
- The current age (or age at death) is written inside each symbol, with years above it.
Placement and Institutions
- Foster child
- A dotted child line marks a foster placement; "LW 21–22" records the years the child lived there.
- Household
- A boundary around the people who share a home, with the year it began (shown in the editor’s Households view).
- Institution box
- A small labelled box (prison, residential treatment, assisted living) with years, linked to the person by a dotted line.
Couples
- Marriage
- A solid line between partners; the marriage year is written on the line (m 90 = married 1990).
- Widowed
- A small x on the couple line marks the end of a marriage through death (wid 15).
- Ended unmarried relationship
- A dashed or dotted couple line with one slash marks an unmarried relationship that has ended.
Emotional Relationships
- Close
- Two parallel blue lines mark an emotionally close relationship.
- Conflict
- Dashed red double lines mark open conflict.
- Physical abuse
- A red zigzag with an arrow points from the person who harmed to the person harmed.
- Emotional neglect
- A dotted blue arrow marks emotional neglect, pointing to the child.
Medical
- Medical shading
- The left half of a symbol is shaded for a physical or mental illness and the bottom half for alcohol or drug use; each condition has its own colour, listed in the key. Hatching means suspected, a partial fill means in recovery.
Related Resources
- Read our guide to genograms for child welfare.
- See how genograms in social work support assessment and planning.
- The abuse relationship symbol points from the person who harmed to the person harmed.
- Compare with our foster care family genogram.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a kinship care genogram used for?
How do you show prison or rehab on a genogram?
How do you record a foster placement and how long a child lived there?
Should abuse and neglect appear on a genogram?
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Create Your Own Genogram
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Educational disclaimer: This genogram example is an educational illustration of genogram notation and family systems concepts. Examples based on public figures use publicly available information. They are not clinical documents. All examples are intended for learning genogram symbols and patterns.