Knowledge on elderly people’s understandings of dependence and independence is relatively scarce even though there is plenty of gerontological research on related topics, such as being in need of help and assistance, diminished everyday competence and autonomy. This means that, although we know how to measure different types of dependency (i.e. structural, physical, behavioral etc.), we know, in fact, very little about how elderly people, who are deemed to be dependent by such measurements, define dependency, independence and autonomy. This study focuses therefore on home-help care recipients’ understandings of these constructs in order to shed light on how elderly people that are — according to welfare state policies and home-help care programs — regarded as dependent make sense of their situation. Our findings, which stress the variability of the social construction of dependency and independence that these elders uphold, show how elderly people differentiate between being in need of help and assistance — which is in the literature often equated with being dependent— and being independent and autonomous. Through the separation of aspects of these understandings as antecedents (i.e. the reason why one is in need of help and assistance) and state (i.e. being independent and autonomous), these home-help care recipients are able to disregard their dependency when constructing themselves as autonomous and able selves.