Order Description
EPAS 2.1.4 Engage diversity and difference in practice (pb a,b,c, and d)
Cultural Genogram assignment (Signature Assignment): Students will complete a cultural genogram in
order to identify and explore how their own cultural identity can potentially impact their
professional practice. This assignment will assist the student to gain insight into how culture
affects the lives of their future clients.
Cultural Genogram Assignment
Create a genogram of your family, at least three generations in a Microsoft Word document.
Indicate gender by using a circle (female) and square (male). Write in ages (if alive) and date (if
deceased). Use your own relationship symbols as they relate to perceived relationships
(relationships can either be distant or close. Provide me with a key to the symbols: Close,
Distant, Conflicted, Enmeshed and Estranged.
Using symbols fill in ethnic/racial/religion/language/affiliation/disability of the relationships
in your family tree. Also include interethnic/racial, marriages and relationships.
Identify for each generation any interpersonal relationships that are diverse from the family and
the level of interaction with these relationships. Example: close friends, as family members,
distant friends, only at work relationships, etc.
Write a 6-7 page APA format paper(12 point Times new Roman font) answering the following questions:
Write about your family of origin values. For some of you, this will include more than one diverse
group and for others it may only include the group you most identify in relation to your family. To
identify values you may have to use personal knowledge and experience and interviews with members
of your family. Family of origin values are the ideas, beliefs, and customs that you learned
growing up from parents and other caregivers. These values often originate from religious beliefs.
Section 1:
What were you taught growing up about the following?
• Money: How did your family respond to money problems? Did they struggle for survival or did
things come easily to them? What did they spend their money for? Who controlled the purse strings?
How did their expenditures reflect their values? How did they talk about money?
• Possessions: Did your parents have favorite possessions (house, car, pictures). If so, was the
care of possessions more important to them than the care of people, or vice versa? Did your family
try to keep up the Joneses?
• Crisis: What happened in family crisis such as death, illness, accident, divorce, and loss of a
job or natural disaster? Did your parents respond differently to different types of crises? Who
could be relied upon? Who fell apart?
• Fun: What did your family do for fun? Where? Did your parents have fun together? How did they
entertain at home? Whom did they invite to the house?
• Sex Roles: What were your parent’s attitudes about maleness and femaleness? Did your father
respect your mother? Did he downgrade her? Did your mother respect your father, or did she
downgrade him? What roles did they play that they assumed were masculine or feminine? Did they
expect you to play these roles?
• Education: What did your family say about education? Was education in itself valuable, or was it
a means to an end? How much education did your parents have? Were they satisfied with it? Did they
encourage you to have more? The same? Less? Were they interested, indifferent, or hostile toward
your education? School? Teachers?
• Work: What kind of jobs did your parents have? Were they satisfied with them? What did they say
about the jobs? Did they want you to do the same kind of work? Something better? Did they have
specific attitudes about what was woman’s work and what was man’s work in the world?
Section 2: Examining your Background and Cultural Competence
Write about the opinions and attitudes related to diversity that were passed along in your family.
Include any ethnic/racial perceptions/stereotypes your family may have had about other groups.
Diversity: How did your family express ideas toward people of different religious beliefs? How did
they express their attitudes? Did your parents act friendly, hostile, cool or fearful toward people
of different color? Different ethnic backgrounds? Different sexual orientations? What did they say?
What did they do?
How have the structures of culture in your family oppressed, marginalized, alienated, or created or
enhanced prvilige and power?
Identify your personal beliefs in comparison to the opinions and attitudes related to diversity of
past generations in your family.
Conclusion: Include a conclusion section of your paper that discusses what this assignment has made
you identify or recognize in your family and in you. What personal biases have you identified that
may be a potential challenge for you in working with diverse groups in the future?
How do you think this may be helpful for your future as a professional social worker? In what ways
do you feel that you will be able to engage your future clients as informants of their own culture
and identity?