This article describes the pertinence of the capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen for analyzing the forms of accompaniment of persons with Alzheimer’s disease at a time when the French Alzheimer plan (2008-2012) is explicitly appealing to family responsibility and commitment in upholding the goal of home care for as long as possible of persons with the illness. This approach enables an examination of the freedom to act of each person and affirms the importance of understanding that Alzheimer’s disease is not only a factor that reduces resources by preventing their conversion to capabilities but that it also compromises some or all of the goals and objectives the person strived for or could have attained. This understanding makes it necessary to constitute the richest possible body of information on daily ways of doing and being, as well as their associated aims, by multiplying data sources and by developing a multidisciplinary approach. Statistical and econometric analyses have enabled distinguishing the unique functionings of ill persons and estimating their disadvantages in terms of capabilities. At the same time, various qualitative methods have attempted to gain a more precise understanding of different ways of caring for them at home. This identified a process of “capabilities through favours” that was a product of purposeful family involvement designed to maintain a life course to which the person attached value.