The focus of Jo’s research is upon the legal regulation of the medical treatment of children. She has published on a wide range of issues on the medical treatment of babies, infants and young children; the care of disabled children; parental responsibilities; the issues arising from the Bristol Royal Infirmary Inquiry; compassionate killings; teenagers and health. In this work she has applied moral and legal theories of responsibility to private, or personal, law, informed by, and developing, the feminist ethic of care through the concept of relational responsibilities.

Her first monograph, Parental responsibility, young children and healthcare law, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007) critically examined the moral, social and legal responsibilities of parents, professionals and the state for the healthcare of babies, infants and young children. Her second, Medical Treatment of Children and the Law: Beyond Parental Responsibilities (Routledge, 2020) develops her earlier work by undertaking a rigorous critical analysis of the case law concerned with the provision of medical treatment to children since the first reported cases over forty years ago. It argues that understanding of the cases only as disputes over, and judicial resolution of, the best interests of the child fails to recognise professional duties and public responsibilities for the welfare and protection of children that exist alongside parental responsibilities and which justify public, or state, intervention into family life and parental decision-making. Whilst the principles, and approach, of the court established in the early cases endures, the nature, and balance, of these responsibilities to children in their care need to be understood in the social, legal, political context in which they are exercised and enforced by the court.

This book included a table of all reported judgments concerning the medical treatment of children from the first case of Re D in 1976. In addition to the case citation and judge, the table includes: age and medical condition of the child, the treatment at issue, the process by which the case was referred to court, the decision of the court and identifies important issues raised by the case. It is updated monthly and available for download as a resource for anyone working on, or interested in the issues raised by, the law concerning the medical treatment of children: https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.29541134.v1.

In her work, Jo seeks to challenge the focus within law upon individualism and autonomy by arguing that the law should acknowledge the connections between individuals, dependency as a norm and the centrality of relationships to the provision of care applying the feminist ethic of care to aspects of family, and health, law. Jo is co-editor, with Heather Keating and Craig Lind, of three edited collections which examine 'family responsibilites'; Responsibility, Law and the Family (2008), Taking Responsibility, Law and the Changing Family (2011) and Regulating Family Responsibility (2011).