Relationships with staff are crucial to participants' growth in youth development programs. These programs help young people develop social and emotional competencies including relationship building, defined as "the ability to establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships with diverse individuals and groups" (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, 2017). In her work in afterschool programs, the author experiences firsthand how lasting relationships between staff and the youth and families they serve are central to the work. Staff become a touchpoint and a steady presence: connecting youth to opportunities, listening to them, and supporting them simply by being there. However, staff are not always there. Rates of staff turnover in youth-serving organizations are extremely high--as high as 40 percent per year, according to the Next Generation Youth Work Coalition (2010). To find out how young people feel about staff transitions or thinking about ways to support them when staff leave their program, she conducted research in the program in which she was working during her participation in the National Afterschool Matters Fellowship, asking youth and staff about participants' perspectives on staff transitions and on what they need to make transitions easier. Her findings suggest ways programs can support youth through staff transitions to bolster their ability both to persist in the program and to build relationships with new staff.