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Mabel Cooper says social work training should involve getting to know more people with learning difficulties.

When I first came out of long-stay hospital in 1980 I had a social worker, but I think he was not able to do his job. He did not know how to help me. He had worked with children but never with people with a learning difficulty because he had not come across people with a learning difficulty before - we were all shut away in hospitals, not out in the community. He didn't do anything because he did not know how to go round it - he did not know how I could get benefits, he did not know how to help me to get housing, so all he did was meet with me and chat. I had to tell him I would not see him any more as he could not do anything to help.

The person who helped me was my friend Eva. She had been a nurse at my long-stay hospital, St. Lawrence's in Caterham, Surrey, and had become a really good friend. When my social worker did not know how to get benefits and whatever, Eva knew how to go about it. She knew the contacts. I was very lucky to have a friend like her. Other people were not so fortunate and were sent back to their own boroughs, where they knew no one and lost contact with their friends from the hospital. This is all wrong.

I hope this would not happen now. Social workers should be able to talk to and help people with learning difficulties to get what they are entitled to. I have a social worker who looks after all the people in the boarding-out scheme. She is lovely. She knows how to go around the system. I know how to get hold of her and she treats me with respect - as an adult. We need more like her.

I think social workers should have better training by meeting people with learning difficulties in day centres and in self-advocacy groups. They should get to know people and what they need. I have been in groups who have helped to train doctors and nurses to treat people with learning difficulties better. And this training could help social workers too.

In the hospital everyone was treated as the same. They treated us like children - we had to be in bed by 9pm and up at 6am before the day staff arrived. We had to fit in with the system rather than staff being there to help us.

But we are not all the same and should not be treated as such. I like going down the market but my friend does not like going. She needs different kinds of support to me.

I like the day centre I go to. I don't go every day because I am busy going to meetings and seeing friends. I think people with learning difficulties should have the right to choose if they want to go to a day centre. I think they should have the right to go to college if they want to - they should have the right to do anything they want to as long as it is within reason. They need their social workers to support them to be able to do these things. Some people need travel training or someone to go with them.

I need help to go to new places and to read and to write. If I have the right support I can do the things I want to do.

Mabel Cooper is a service user with learning difficulties.