SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET : PSYCHIC INCOME : In Social Work, Helping Has Intangible Rewards : Job satisfaction comes in many forms for those who make their living assisting others.

Thirty years ago, Hugh McIsaac was a reporter for the old Los Angeles Daily Mirror, working the police beat. One afternoon he arrived at yet another murder scene and muttered to himself, “I don’t want to be doing this.”

That was a turning point. “Instead of interviewing people at disasters, I wanted to help them,” he said. He decided to become a social worker.

In the next few years, social work gained cachet as the hippest of the helping professions. They were the Green Berets in the war on poverty--one of the few professions allowed to join the ‘60s revolution.

But then times changed, baby. In the ‘80s, America was the land of Milken, honey. If you weren’t Donald J. Trump, you were a chump. And in the eyes of the exalted yuppie, the biggest knee-jerk, bleeding-heart, do-gooder chumps of all were social workers.

“Social work has always been on a roller-coaster ride which reflects society’s values and priorities,” said Leonard Schneiderman, dean of the School of Social Welfare at UCLA.

“In the ‘80s, the ‘self’ and high earnings were the principal values,” Schneiderman said. But he thinks that’s changing. Polls at UCLA show “a hunger” among students to do something for the greater good, something that “gives them a sense of membership in a humane community,” he said.

Society as a whole is beginning to value social work again, the dean said.

According to the National Assn. of Social Workers in Maryland: “Social work is the applied science of helping people achieve an effective level of psychosocial functioning.”

Cut through the jargon, and you’ll find that what social workers do is help people of all ages and backgrounds to get by in this sometimes mean world. They are society’s foot soldiers in the battle against poverty, homelessness, gang warfare, child abuse and mental illness.

They counsel both wealthy schizophrenics and impoverished geniuses through the red tape needed to receive social services. They work in hospitals, businesses, schools, community health agencies and private practice, focusing always on the underlying issues in a person’s whole life, rather than just a specific problem.

By 1988 an estimated 385,000 people nationwide had decided to choose social work as a profession, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And for reasons that presumably have nothing to do with BMWs and Perrier, the profession is expected to grow 22% to 33% by the year 2000.

The entry-level credential for the job is a bachelor’s degree in social work from one of the 300 to 400 colleges and universities nationwide that are accredited by the National Council on Social Work Education.

Many of the better-paying positions in the field, however, require a master’s of social work, or MSW, degree, and most states recognize additional credentials up to a Ph.D, which allows a social worker to teach at the college level.

The national minimum salaries suggested by the National Assn. of Social Workers range from $19,000 for a neophyte with a bachelor’s degree to $45,000 for an MSW in an administrative position, while social workers in private practice may make $60,000 or more.

According to Ellen Dunbar, executive director of the California chapter of the association, there are more than 12,000 licensed clinical social workers in the state who belong to the organization, and perhaps twice as many in the state overall.

For the most part, they aren’t there for the money.

McIsaac never felt a part of ‘60s activism and he didn’t necessarily share the countercultural world view. But the former police reporter had come to believe that “war and other violent ways of resolving disputes hadn’t worked.”

Now, as director of family services for the Los Angeles County Superior Court, he earns a lot of satisfaction from knowing he has helped pioneer a new way to resolve complex family custody disputes.

Rather than simply throw the parents into court “like two scorpions in a bottle,” the process encourages them to work out their differences outside the courtroom by determining their individual needs and then discovering grounds for mutual gain, he said.

Like many social workers, McIsaac seems to use the phrase “money isn’t everything” almost as a mantra.

“Peace of mind is a lot more important to me than money,” he said. “The job is stressful, but it’s exciting. You see dramatic changes in families and know that their lives are going to get better. You sleep well at night.” Those are the sort of reasons why Brenda Mitchell, 42, is entering an MSW program at Sacramento State University soon. She does not, however, look at the profession with romantic notions.

For the past 10 years, Mitchell has worked with indigent women at the Downtown Women’s Center in Los Angeles. She said she has reaped enormous benefits from the job--none of which have to do with her paycheck.

“I’m not too ambitious when it comes to wearing the latest whatever and eating the trendiest nouvelles cuisines,” she said. “I find those things a waste of my time. (But) I’m healthy and able to take care of myself, and I think I ought to help others who can’t. It just seems like a natural thing to do.”

Mitchell recalls a woman who arrived at the shelter seven years ago. Emotionally ill, she had been protected from the world by her parents her whole life, Mitchell said.

When her parents died, her safety net vanished. She wound up in the streets, becoming the sort of seemingly subhuman presence most Angelenos learn to screen from their consciousness.

When Mitchell finally established a rapport, the woman told her why she had been scribbling each day into a notebook: “I’m translating Tristan und Isolde into French,” she said, referring to the 13th-Century German epic.

The shelter applied for Social Security disability income for the woman and fought the recalcitrant system until it paid up.

The woman still has problems, but she’s on medication now. She has transcended the interior chaos in which Mitchell found her.

“We’ve become very good friends,” Mitchell said. “She is a very gentle soul. And the fact that I know she’s safe now makes me feel very, very good.

“We hug a lot,” Mitchell said. “Women like her might live the rest of their lives and not have anyone to hug. That’s what makes me want to continue in this field. . . . I think it takes a certain indifference to sell stocks on Wall Street. I need other things.”