"The vision we had for the camp was that as well as running our Youth Quest programmes on site, we could also run our families programme - we've got the ability now to house families and bring them out for respite care," he said.
"We invite the families of the boys we're working with to come and stay for a short period.
"You've got to work with the whanau as well. If you don't, you tend to only fix one part of the family which is generally the boy that is getting in trouble."
A group of 10 Youth Quest programme participants are about to graduate from a drilling cadetship after which they will be employed by Napier-based Te Aratika Drilling.
Their new skills will be put to use by the company as part of the Government-funded project to install a nationwide fibre-optic broadband network.
Mr Fong said Youth Quest was working with EIT to offer participants qualifications in farming and other training.
"We've got a young fella with us at the moment who was paroled to us from Mangaroa prison - he was 16 when he went in. He's 19 this year and in July we hope to get him into the mechanics course at EIT.
"He's doing amazingly well. I can see him moving through and becoming a mentor on our programme himself. He's just got the goods."
Youth Quest's corporate support has included a $50,000 grant from the Vodafone Foundation, which has helped fund the pilot programme with EIT to guide participants into pre-trade training courses.
Mr Fong said more sponsorship and employer support was needed.
"We do a lot of hard work with these boys to get them prepared but we also need some good companies to put up their hands and say, 'hey, we'll give one of your guys a shot'."