Research shows that incarcerated young people who sustain positive relationships with loved ones have better outcomes during and after being in juvenile justice placement facilities than youth who do not. This brief summarizes the first year of a research and technical assistance project the Vera Institute of Justice conducted with the Ohio Department of Youth Services. The initiative was designed to help placement facility staff draw on the families of incarcerated youth as a source of support. Initial findings point to the importance of family, broadly defined, to juvenile-justice system involved youth and describe promising results from staff’s use of Vera’s Juvenile Relational Inquiry Tool.