Family Network (Genogram)

The Casebook application exists as a social ecosystem. Relationships between people, both formal and informal, are illustrated in the Family Network and separated by individual boxes with dark gray or black headers. The Family Network can be viewed from a Person Profile, Assessment, Case, or Resource page.

All person profile pages have the Family Network card and each card should be filled in to represent the full knowledge you have about a person's family structure. Family networks should be built out not only for focus children, but also for foster families. 

Navigating the Family Network

The family network displays all the relationships and households for a person. Each row represents a different generation (ie all parents are on a row, grandparents on the next row up, great-grandparents above that, etc); if one generation has no relationships, that row will not display.

It is common for workers to record many formal and informal supports as well as extended family to populate the Family Network. An example of a informal support is a babysitter and neighbor; an example of an formal support is a school counselor. 

Yellow boxes with light headers in the diagram help you quickly see households, formal, and informal supports. Any other relationships are listed outside of a yellow box and their relationship with the person's whose perspective you're viewing are listed

Often only a partial view of the family network displays in the family network card on a unit of work. You can click and drag anywhere in the card to move the family network diagram around in the card. Casebook signals that you can do this by changing the mouse pointer to a plus sign. You can also pop out the family network into a full page view by clicking the pop-out button in the top right corner. 

Within the family network, Casebook signifies whose perspective you are viewing by encircling that person with a dark yellow circle. You can change the network's perspective by clicking on any other person displayed in the network. When another person is clicked, the family network will automatically redraw to display that person's household and relationships.

You can see the different households a person is a member of by toggling with the dropdown menu found at the top of the card. From the dropdown on a person page, you can see all of the households that person is a member of; on a case or assessment, you can see all of the households the focus children and victims are members in.

Adding People to the Family Network

The family network displays households and relationships from a particular person's perspective. If you are viewing the focus child's family network, and want his grandmother to appear in the display, you can either add her to a household with the focus child or create a relationship between her and the focus child, or both. If she is added to a household, she will appear in the darker yellow household box. If just a relationship is created, she will appear as a support outside of the household box.

To learn more about creating relationships, click here.

To learn more about adding people to households, click here.

Using the Different Households Toggle on the Family Network

The Family Network card has a dropdown menu on the top left corner that allows workers to toggle between which household the Family Network displays. On any page displaying the family network, you can toggle between primary and secondary households of the person whose perspective you're viewing. This makes it easy to access every child's family and support networks regardless of whether relationships exist between the children.