Poverty is one of the most pressing problems of contemporary Czech society. The rate of exposure to income poverty will reach over 12% of the ten million inhabitants of the Czech Republic in 2022, including almost 100,000 children under six and 180,000 people over 65. The most critical challenge for social policy and social work are people living in socially excluded localities. A socially excluded or socially excluded locality is one where there is a concentration of more than 20 people living in unsatisfactory conditions in a physically or symbolically bounded area. Social exclusion in such conditions means, in particular, material deprivation, which is accompanied by various barriers, such as problematic employment in the open labour and housing markets, limited access to public services, including education and health care, and often spatial segregation and symbolic stigmatisation of people. In the Czech Republic, the problem is also linked to a large extent to the phenomenon of ethnic discrimination against Roma. The paper deals with the development and current situation of socially excluded localities in the Czech Republic and the possibilities of social work to influence the social situation and prospects of their inhabitants.