About Aspen FMS
We exist to help Minnesota families get paid for the care they're already giving.
Aspen FMS was built on a simple belief: the people who love and care for someone every day should be the ones running their care, and they shouldn't have to give up their income to do it.
Our story
Why we started Aspen
Self-direction is one of the best things that's happened to Minnesota's home and community-based services. It lets parents be paid caregivers for their children with disabilities. It lets adult children get paid to care for an aging parent. It lets spouses keep their household running while caring for each other.
But we kept hearing the same complaints from participants and case managers:
- “I can't get my FMS provider on the phone.”
- “My paycheck was short again, and no one will tell me why.”
- “I have no idea how much budget I have left this month.”
- “They don't seem to know how the paid parent rules work.”
- “Nothing about this process feels Minnesota-specific.”
We built Aspen FMS to fix that. We're licensed in Minnesota, we focus only on CDCS and CFSS Budget Model, and we treat every participant like their case is the only one we have. Because in a real sense it is: your child isn't a ticket number and your mom isn't a case ID. They're someone's whole world.
In your corner
A Minnesota team that actually picks up.
Call Aspen and you reach a person who knows CDCS and CFSS cold, not a phone tree and not an out-of-state call center.
Our focus
The majority of our clients are paid parents, spouses, and adult children.
Most Minnesota FMS providers treat paid family caregivers as just one type of customer. We treat them as our core customer. If you're a family caregiver, you're not a special case with us. You're who we built this for.
- Our enrollment process is built around the specific rules that apply when you're hiring a family member.
- Our onboarding team knows how to set up parent-, spouse-, and adult-child-employee relationships correctly, for both federal and Minnesota taxes.
- Our support team knows the documentation that comes with paid family caregiving and can answer in real time.
- Our communication style is built for families, not back-office HR teams.
What makes us different
Built for Minnesota. Built for you.
Local expertise
We know MN-ITS billing, the 245D rules, the SEIU collective bargaining agreement, the MCO landscape, and the lead-agency dynamics in every county. When DHS issues a bulletin, we already know.
Multilingual support
Our team supports the languages Minnesota families actually speak, including Somali, Spanish, Hmong, Karen, Oromo, and Arabic. We don't expect you to translate your own intake paperwork.
Technology that respects your time
An online portal for participants, mobile EVV timesheets for caregivers, real-time budget tracking. Our tech is built to fade into the background, not become another job.
Accountability you can feel
We send proactive updates and catch problems before you do. When something does go wrong, we own it, tell you what we're doing, and follow up until it's resolved.
A team that's been here
Our staff includes people who have been family caregivers, navigated MA applications, and sat through county assessments and waiver re-determinations. We're not reading from a script.
Support that answers
Real people, in the language you speak.
Our support team answers in Somali, Spanish, Hmong and more, usually within a single business day.
A team that's been here
People who have navigated this themselves.
Our staff includes former family caregivers who have sat through county assessments and waiver re-determinations. We measure ourselves on how well families are actually served.
Our values
What we believe
- Choice
- You know yourself and your family better than any agency ever will.
- Dignity
- Asking for help shouldn't mean giving up control. Needing care doesn't mean someone else makes every decision.
- Honesty
- We tell you what we know, what we don't, and what we're working on. If something will take longer, we say so.
- Speed
- Your paycheck shouldn't be late because of someone else's mistake. Your enrollment shouldn't take three months.
- Equity
- Self-direction works best when every family, regardless of language, immigration status, income, or zip code, can actually access it.