Worked examples
Six annotated ecomaps for common clinical scenarios, each read line by line. Every map uses Hartman-standard notation — connection strength and energy-flow direction.
New to the notation? Start with what is an ecomap and the ecomap symbols legend.
Family ecomap
A working single mother of two. The strongest support is the grandmother providing daily childcare, and the school is a mutual, engaged relationship. The two stressful lines — an inflexible employer and a benefits office — are where energy drains out. The conflictual custody relationship and a thin friend network flag two intervention targets: reducing co-parenting conflict and rebuilding social support.
Geriatric / isolation
Healthcare systems carry almost all the load — strong lines to primary care and home health, both flowing inward. Family contact is thin and long-distance, the spouse relationship is severed by bereavement, and a formerly sustaining faith community has lapsed. Nearly every arrow points in: this client receives care but has few reciprocal ties. The isolation pattern is the clinical headline, and the dormant church connection is an untapped strength to reactivate.
Student / young adult
A fairly well-resourced student: strong, mutual ties to the university, parents, and roommates. The stress is financial — a demanding part-time job draining energy outward and a loan-based aid package. A newly opened counseling connection is a promising inward line to strengthen. This is a common "functioning but stretched" picture used to teach students how to read energy balance.
Substance use / behavioral health
A recovery-focused map. The new sober network — treatment, a home group, and a sponsor — is dense and mostly flowing inward, exactly what early recovery needs. Family ties are weak but repairing, and the deliberately severed connection to using friends is a positive, protective break rather than a deficit. Redrawn in six months, the family line thickening would make progress visible at a glance.
Child welfare
Mandated, system-heavy connections dominate: a caseworker and a dependency court, both required rather than chosen. School is the one strong, stabilizing relationship. The stressful supervised-visitation line to the birth mother and the severed sibling bond are the emotional core of the case — preserving the sibling relationship is a concrete, mappable goal. A classic teaching example for child-welfare practicum.
Cultural / systems navigation
The cultural community and the children’s school are the family’s two strongest, most mutual anchors — a strengths-based starting point. Energy drains outward through a demanding employer and a stressful pending immigration case. A weak line to the health clinic, labeled with a language barrier, points to a specific, fixable access problem: interpreter services. Ecomaps make that kind of concrete, actionable gap obvious.
Full walkthrough in the how to create an ecomap guide, or start from a pre-filled ecomap template.
A completed ecomap has the client or family in a central circle, surrounding circles for each significant system (family, work, school, healthcare, faith, agencies), and lines connecting them. The line style shows relationship quality — thick for strong, dashed for weak, hashed for stressful, jagged for conflictual — and arrows show which way support flows. The examples on this page are all worked, annotated maps.
The single-parent family and child-in-foster-care examples above are typical social work ecomaps: they show mandated agency connections, mixed family ties, and clear stress and support patterns that translate directly into a case plan. Ecomaps are a standard part of biopsychosocial and family assessment in social work.
Yes — these are illustrative teaching examples with fictional clients, suitable for referencing in coursework and field seminars. For an assignment you'll usually create your own ecomap from a case; the how-to guide walks through the process, and Ecomap Creator lets you build one on iPad and export it as a PDF.
Most ecomaps include six to ten systems. Too few and the map is thin; too many and it becomes cluttered. Focus on the systems that matter most to the presenting situation — the examples here use six each for clarity.
Every example here can be drawn in minutes in Ecomap Creator — Hartman notation, templates, and PDF export built in.
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