**6. Conclusions**

COVID-19 has transformed the lives of people around the world, and care social service workers are no exception. The pandemic changed their practices and routines at work, having to face a double challenge, that of the pandemic and that of caring for others during the pandemic.

Through our study, we were able to know that the levels of affectation in this population are high and that those who are most affected are the youngest people, who could be developing other care and parenting tasks in their own homes. Also, as noted in other studies, women are affected.

In addition to providing key information, our study allows us to have a tool in Spanish to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on people's lives and thus monitor the welfare status of people in a Spanish-speaking context.

While this research highlights the deterioration of the quality of life to which health care workers are exposed, its results should be observed with caution. First, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a developing phenomenon that continues to be researched and about which new things are constantly known.

Likewise, the study sample is limited to the unique context of social services in Chile, and they are not generalizable because of the context and because some attributes of caregivers in this type of service may have cultural roots [44]. In fact, the results may not be generalizable to other countries, as cultural norms are one of the key factors that can shape individual behavior [45]. Therefore, studies that test a similar model in an intercultural setting should be encouraged.

However, the scenario described is an urgent call to social work managers and leaders to promote the well-being and performance of care workers and to address post-traumatic stress and vicarious stress while populations served by the care workforce present significant mental health issues.

Therefore, it is proposed that those in leadership positions implement practices that address the problem described. In this way, the first step for managers should be to recognize the problem, while many times, the symptoms of stress are overlooked by teams, naturalizing the impact on quality of life. Once the different actors have recognized the problem, the provision of permanent personal and collective protective equipment must be guaranteed, and effective use must be ensured. In the same way, health in all its dimensions of caregivers should be monitored, breaks in their working day should be encouraged, and periodic instances of self-care and progress in individual or collective supervision should be provided.

By following some of these guidelines, we believe that social service will be a little stronger than what has happened in the last 2 years.

*The Effect of COVID-19 on the Quality of Life of Care Workers: Challenges for Social Services… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105603*
