For the rest of one's life?

For most of its history the Charterhouse provided a home for its inmates for the rest of their lives.  Of course, a few were evicted (including widows of dead male inmates) and a few chose to leave.  But the majority would stay there until they died, because there was nowhere else to go.  The question arises of who would care for those inmates who could no longer care for themselves.  The post of Matron did not exist until the late 18th century at the earliest.  A legal ruling at that time stated that the founding document didn't allow for such a paid post.  But the records show that women were employed as nurses on a casual basis many times over the years.  Even after a Matron was employed, she could not be expected to provide round-the-clock care for a sick resident, even with an assistant.  The practice continued of employing "carers" for those who needed them; we find small ads in the local paper for the jobs.  However, it's not clear who paid for them.  When the ad directs applicants to a specific room number it may be that it was the resident who was paying.
The situation started to change late in the 19th century.  There were two large workhouses in the area, for Hull and Sculcoates, and they had infirmaries which provided the only available medical care for the poorest.  There are several instances in the archives of Masters of the Charterhouse trying to get a resident accepted by the workhouse, and in one case getting a sarcastic response from the Guardians.  The pressure intensified after the new scheme of governance was introduced in 1901.  The cutting is

from the Hull Daily Mail in April 1907, reacting to a caustic letter from a reader.  The trustees, it explained, had no choice but to remove "any inmate suffering from mental disease".  The Charterhouse was still expected to cope with physical disability, but the difficulties for people with what we would now call "mobility problems" were exacerbated by the fact that half the rooms were upstairs.  Many could find themselves marooned in their rooms because they couldn't manage those stairs.
The early 20th century saw the first faint signs of a modern social security system to replace the old Poor Law.  The first old age pensions were paid on 1 January 1909, for instance.  Gradually there were options for the elderly.  And the trustees of the Charterhouse seemed determined that this absolved them from any responsibility to make life easier for residents; if they couldn't cope, there was local authority provision to fall back on.  Two letters in the archives make this very clear.  They are from the 1930s and 1950s.  In the first case a geriatric specialist from the hospital was called in to advise on a resident who kept falling.  What they wanted, clearly, was a verdict that the man couldn't stay there.  The specialist was furious.  The falls occurred, he said, when the man had to make his way along the corridor at night to get to the toilet.  All that was needed was the installation of a handrail.  And while you're at it (to paraphrase) getting into and out of that toilet is a nightmare because of the lack of space.  There is no follow-up to this correspondence.  Nothing was done.  The second case involved a female resident who was in hospital having had a leg amputated.  The clerk to the trustees wrote to the hospital saying that the lady could not return to the Charterhouse and should be discharged to the care of the local authority.  The reply was fierce.  The lady had learned to cope very well with her prosthetic leg; she could even manage stairs.  It was the hospital's practice to discharge people back to their own homes, and they would do so in this case.
In the 1970s the Victorian buildings were demolished and replaced by modern flats.  But strangely, there was no effort to make these, and the renovated Georgian buildings, more friendly to those with disabilities.  It seems to have been deliberate.  Correspondence shows that organisations representing the elderly stressed the need for ramps to be included.  These would have cost nothing, but were not in the plans.  The new blocks were designed in such a way that stairlifts are impossible to install, and lifts were never considered.  It was assumed, as it still is, that anyone with an upstairs flat who could no longer manage the stairs would move to a ground floor flat when one became available. 
Naturally, when residents can no longer look after themselves they have relied on residential care courtesy of the local authority.  With this provision increasingly scarce, we now sometimes have the need for "carers" to visit a resident several times a day.