Deprivation of assets is about making deliberate attempts to divest oneself of funds in order to avoid paying for care fees. That's not the same as using one's savings to help family members before the idea of going into care is on the cards.
The problem is whether you can still help family members once going into care is "on the cards" and at what stage the LA consider it's "on the cards".
I'm surprised at the number of people who expect their parent to go into care and still have an inheritance as a matter of right. I think what people have been expressing is the fundamental unfairness of a scheme that says "if you have a disease which needs medical care your children can inherit everything; if your disease causes mainly social needs, they inherit (virtually) noting". And the fact that care can be so open ended means that insurance is prohibitively expensive - a big catastrophe in life, and you can't practicably insure for it in the way you would for, eg, your house burning down.
You can avoid care fees by looking after your parent in your home till they die, as our grandparents did. But in our grandparents day, people didn't live so long, they didn't live so long in ill-health, and they were far less likely to have dementia. And if they did have dementia, the medical profession were much less good at keeping their bodies going. It's not realistic for one person, even with help from a partner, to keep a 24 hour watch on someone, as well as washing and dressing them, toileting them, feeding them, dealing with levels of medication that were unheard of 40 years ago, dressing ulcerated legs or pressure sores, coping with disturbed or even aggressive behaviour. Let alone doing this while still looking after children or doing a full time job.