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People with learning difficulties still face discrimination when they want a family, writes Julie Graysmark.

My name is Julie and I live in Milton Keynes. I am the chairperson of Milton Keynes People First, Kathleen Franklin, who has written this column before, is the secretary. I am an advocate. I support other people like myself to speak up for themselves. I have my own flat and I am 40.

As a baby I spent most of my time in long-stay hospitals - at least seven of them - until I was a child and was adopted. When I was a teenager, my dad died. My mum didn't have support, so I went to live at my neighbour's. Then a social worker came and sent me to Manor House - a long-stay hospital in Aylesbury.

While I was at Manor House, I helped take care of little kids. I fed them and played with them. This made me think I would like a child of my own some day. I wanted to learn to take care of myself, so that if I had a child I could take care of it.

When I turned 19, I told one of the staff at the hostel I was at that I would like to have a home and a family of my own some day. She said: "You can't. It's not possible for someone like you!" My mum backed her up, which upset me even more.

The staff at the hostel said we were allowed to have boyfriends, but that if we were caught having sex something would be done to guarantee that there would be no children as a result. This meant that we would be sterilised. We didn't know anything about sex, so we couldn't be doing it anyway. I thought the way people got a baby was to go and choose one out of an orphanage.

I eventually moved out of the hostel to a couple of different group homes. While I was at one of them, I reconnected with a woman I met at Manor House. Now her and her family are what I class as part of my family. She has three children aged 16, 14 and 11. The eldest has a disability and I am like a mentor to her. I helped bring up these kids. I love them to bits, but it's not the same as having a child of your own.

Although I am happy with the children I have in my life, I feel I have missed out on the chance to have my own child. It hurts that I was discriminated against in this way. I think it's unfair. I know it still happens to people like me or, if they do have a child, it is taken off them. Very rarely are they allowed to keep it.

You could say this kind of discrimination only went on 20 years ago and that times have changed. Well, last summer I was watching the kids. My neighbour called social services, saying that some children next door were in danger because a person with learning difficulties was looking after them. So have things really changed?

As a woman with learning difficulties I was able, at the age of 19, to take care of the little ones at Manor House. I wasn't paid to do this work. I didn't get an NVQ for it, like a person without learning difficulties might have. I probably saved the government a lot of money in free labour. But, outside an institution, I am not seen as fit to care for kids or to have my own!

Julie Graysmark is chairperson of Milton Keynes People First.