Family assessment
Family ecomap
A family ecomap puts a whole household at the center and maps how the family — not just one person — connects to the systems around it. It’s a staple of family therapy and child-welfare assessment.
An ordinary ecomap centers a single client. A family ecomap centers the household — two parents and three children, a single parent and a child, a multigenerational home — and asks the same question of the whole unit: where does this family draw support, where is it under strain, and where is it cut off?
Everything else about the notation is the same. Systems sit in circles around the family, and each connection is drawn with a Hartman line style and energy-flow arrows. The only change is the frame: relationships are read as the family’s, not one member’s.
A family ecomap: the Nguyen household and seven systems
The household’s strengths — co-resident grandparents, an engaged school, an active faith community — are mutual, inward-flowing lines. Strain shows up in two stressful connections (demanding employers and an open child-services case) and a weak, language-limited link to healthcare. See more worked maps on the ecomap examples page.
Building a family ecomap
Define the household
Draw the central circle and note who lives in the home. If a family member is central to the case but outside the household — a non-resident parent, a grandparent nearby — you can still include them as a system.
Add the systems the family touches
Schools for each child, both parents’ workplaces, healthcare, faith and cultural community, extended family, and any involved agencies. Families often connect to more systems than an individual because each member brings their own.
Draw connection quality
Use the Hartman line styles for each relationship, judged at the family level: a school that supports the whole family gets a strong line; an agency that stresses the household gets a stressful one.
Mark energy flow
Add arrows for direction of support. Family maps often reveal a household giving out more than it takes in — a signal of collective depletion.
Read it as a family
Look for shared strengths to build on, systems straining the whole household, and gaps where the family is unsupported. This drives family-level goals rather than individual ones.
For the full notation walkthrough see how to create an ecomap, and the ecomap symbols legend for every line style.
Where family ecomaps get used
- Family therapy — mapping the ecological context around the family system, frequently alongside a genogram of the family’s internal structure.
- Child welfare and family social work — assessing a household’s supports and stressors as part of a safety or permanency plan. See ecomaps for social workers.
- Community and pediatric nursing — understanding the family network that shapes a patient’s care at home.
- Field education — a common practicum assignment for learning family-level assessment. See ecomaps for students.
Frequently asked questions
What is a family ecomap?
A family ecomap is an ecomap that places an entire household or family unit at the center — rather than one individual — and maps that family's connections to the surrounding social systems: extended family, schools, workplaces, healthcare, faith community, and agencies. It shows the family's collective sources of support and stress at a glance.
How is a family ecomap different from an individual ecomap?
The difference is only what sits at the center. An individual ecomap centers one person; a family ecomap centers the whole household (e.g. 'The Reyes Family'). The surrounding systems and the Hartman line-and-arrow notation are identical. Family ecomaps are common in family therapy and child-welfare assessment because many systems affect the household as a whole.
How do you make a family ecomap?
Draw a central circle for the family and note who's in the household. Then add a circle for each significant system the family connects to, draw a line to each using the appropriate style (strong, weak, stressful, conflictual, or broken), and add arrows for the direction of support. Finish by reading the map for patterns — where the family is supported, stressed, or isolated.
When should I use a family ecomap instead of a genogram?
Use a family ecomap to map the family's present-day connections to outside systems, and a genogram to map the family's internal structure and history across generations. They answer different questions and are often used together in a full family assessment.
Map a family on iPad in minutes
Ecomap Creator has family templates and Hartman notation built in — center the household, add the systems, export a clean PDF.
Download for iPad — free trial