Family map

How it works

1. Start with one person: yourself, or your client. Or look at one of the five examples first.
2. Under Family you choose someone on the map and add people with the buttons: Parent, Partner, Child, Brother or sister, and also ex-partners, step-parents and foster or adoptive parents. The map arranges itself.
3. Under Homes you choose who lives together: they get a loop around them.
4. Under Bonds you click on two people and choose how things are between them. Under Around you add important people outside the family, such as neighbours, school or a pet.
5. Talk about it using the questions under Talk, and print the map on A4 or A3. You can also save it as a file or copy it as text.

Where it comes from

This comes from the genogram: a drawing of a family with fixed symbols, as made by care workers in youth care and family work. A square is a man or boy, a circle a woman or girl. A line between two people means they are together; a line down goes to their children. That way you see at a glance who belongs to a family, even in a blended family or when a child lives with a foster family.

The Family map uses those symbols. We made the loops around the homes, the bonds with their words, the little faces and the questions ourselves.

Two styles

Under Settings you choose the style. Professional style uses the symbols of a genogram, with the age inside. That is handy for a case file or a meeting. With Faces, everyone appears as a drawn face, with hair, glasses or a beard as you like. Children are smaller. That works well with children, or with someone who would rather not work with squares and circles. There is always a key below the map.

Together or on your own

Under Talk there are questions to talk about with your client: about one person, about a home, about a bond, and about topics such as divorce, a foster family and support. It fits in a first meeting, a family conversation or a case meeting.

If you make a map for yourself, look at it again after a while.

Good to know

• The map also contains information about other people. Only ask what is needed: a first name or a role, such as Grandma, is enough. A surname is not needed.
• Everything works with the keyboard. Tab takes you into the map; the arrow keys take you from person to person. Plus and minus zoom, 0 shows everything. No need to drag: below the map there are buttons to zoom and move around.
• On a narrow screen you can view the map and move it around. Editing is easiest there in the list (choose List under Settings): it shows everyone one below the other, by generation.
• Below the map is The map in words: who is who, who lives where and which bonds there are.
• Talking about family can be hard. Take your time, and stop if it gets too much. Would you like to talk to someone about it? You can, with someone you trust, your GP or a care worker. In immediate danger: call 112.

Your data

What you fill in stays in this page on your own device. Nothing is sent and nothing is saved in your browser. If you close or refresh the page, everything is gone. The browser asks first if there is something on the map you haven’t saved yet.

• The file goes onto your device, in the place you choose. Everything on the map is in it. So keep it in a safe place, especially if it is about your client. With Open a file you load it again; that also only happens in your browser.
• If you choose ‘Save as PDF’ when printing, it is saved as a file on your device.
• If you copy the text, it stays on your device’s clipboard until you copy something else.